It’s happened again. Apple has officially rejected an app that at first blush seems harmless and fun. This time it’s a Commodore 64 emulator from Manomio that offered a realistic joystick and keyboard, portrait and landscape gaming, and a fully licensed C64 emulator code. It was all on the up and up. Apple seemed excited. But then Manomio got the dreaded rejection mail:

Thank you for submitting C64 1.0 to the App Store. We’ve reviewed C64 1.0 and determined that we cannot post this version of your iPhone application to the App Store because it violates the iPhone SDK Agreement; “3.3.2 An Application may not itself install or launch other executable code by any means, including without limitation through the use of a plug-in architecture, calling other frameworks, other APIs or otherwise. No interpreted code may be downloaded and used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple’s Published APIs and built-in interpreter(s).”

So, as we recall, the Palm Pre is supposed to have some sort of iTunes syncing feature built-in. With the Apple pedigree of most of its programmers, this isn’t surprising. When you plug in your Pre, it seems, it will show up as an “iPod.” But how did they do it? John Gruber smells a rat:

If you’re still holding out any sort of hope that Palm is using some sort of heretofore sanctioned, semi-sanctioned, or even maybe-sorta-kinda-sanctioned-if-you-squint-your-eyes means for a third-party device to sync with iTunes via USB, note that the Pre, when connected to iTunes, is labelled as an “iPod”. If you think Apple would ever allow the use of “iPod” to describe anything other than an actual iPod, you’re nuts.

Per a Fortune blog, the Palm Pre syncs “seamlessly” with iTunes. It’s not that shocking considering there are apps that add this functionality to many MP3 players and smartphones. However, this is the first phone besides the iPhone of course that has this ability out of the box. Don’t expect to load your iTunes Music Store purchases on the phone as it can’t handle the DRM. Your what.cd downloads will work fine though.

If you’re like me, your entire music collection has been downloaded/ripped willy-nilly between hits of nitrous oxide and sips of Colt .45. While this does makes for an extensive and fascinating music collection, the resulting mash of nameless tracks, albums without cover art, and songs with the title of the album in the song title (”Yanni - Ethnicity - Almost A Whisper.mp3,” for example), is hardly conducive to absolute listening pleasure.

That’s why I’m glad to report that TuneUp for iTunes is a great service/system. It fixes broken song titles and adds album art and even gives full info on each artist you listen to an offers information on shows they’re playing in your area. Cool, non?

Last January Apple released iLife ‘09, the latest addition to its highly regarded multimedia suite that ships with every new Mac. At the time, much of the media attention went to iPhoto and iMovie, which introduced impressive facial recognition and video stabilization respectively. But me? I was captivated by the GarageBand Lesson Store, a virtual marketplace built into Apple’s music authoring program. The store features song lessons taught by the artists who wrote them, including established musicians like Sting and John Fogerty. Combined with an extremely polished platform for delivering the lessons, I thought that Apple’s Lesson Store might be the company’s next revolution in digital music.

Was I a little overenthusasitc? Probably. But I’ve toyed around with quite a few of the learning programs and videos out there, and the GarageBand lessons have serious potential. And with lessons going for $5 a pop, even if Apple only saw a tiny fraction of the sales it sees on its other stores (as would probably be the case), it could still drive substantial revenue from lesson purchases alone.

Steve Jobs previously stated the Blu-ray was “a big bag of hurt,” but the new iTunes 8.2 splash screen mentions the format nevertheless. This, of course, could mean two things. One, Apple is about to support Blu-ray in it’s media organization software and disc info will be provided by Gracenote. Or two, it’s just something the lawyers wanted to included within the legalese of iTunes as some sort of future proofing.

Good Heavens. Billboard must have broken out its abacus as it was calculating this little number: songs on the iTunes Store that saw their price jump from $0.99 to $1.29 have dropped in chart position. Could it be that, gasp, people saw the $1.29 price for that damn Lady Gaga song—if you’ve been following this story with us, I always (unfairly) single out Lady Gaga; she’s the archetype for pop music—and thought to themselves, “Nah, no thanks.”

Let’s not chastise Apple too harshly for introducing variable pricing for music to the iTunes Store. Why, a quick search on some of the other big online music stores reveals that they, too, charge one price for some songs, and a different price for others. Case in point: Amazon, Rhapsody and Beatport.

That Lady Gaga song you’ve heard 1,000 times at the mall now costs $1.29 on iTunes. Yes, Apple today flipped the switch on variable pricing, something the record labels had wanted for some time now.

Thenew iTunes pricing scheme is set for an April 7 launch, says the Los Angeles Times. They do good work over there. Apple hasn’t revealed this date publicly, but April 7 is supposedly what Cupertino is telling record labels. Remember: prices now top out at $1.29 for popular songs. Think Britney Spears—she’s still popular, right?—Lady Gaga, anything with Auto Tune, etc. This country, I swear. (Although, let the record show, I do like Taylor Swift, which makes me a complete hypocrite and a half-idiot. And I’m not even talking about, “Wow, she’s hot,” I actually mean I enjoy her music.)

Itunes users in New York state who complained about President Obama’s OMNIBUS SPENDING BILL should pipe down, since Gov. Patterson has dropped plans for that “iPod tax” that upset so many people. Some of the stimulus money will be used to make up the budget shortfalls that the “iPod tax” was supposed to cover.

So, Apple not only announced a new Shuffle today, but they also pushed out iTunes 8.1. It’s not as exciting as we first thought, but there are a few nuggets worth mentioning. Obviously, 8.1 supports the new Shuffle, but it also allows you to rip CDs on an iTunes Plus quality and Genius now crosses over to movies and the boobtube.

Apple is really promoting VoiceOver, a new feature found in the just-announced iPod Shuffle. As you may already know, when VoiceOver is activated, the iPod “says” the name of the currently playing song or playlist. So, when I hit the song I want to hear—this week, that’d probably be “Hardcore Girls (Don Rimini Remix)” by The Count and Sinden—the iPod “says” the name and artist. It’s sorta superfluous, yes, but the technology behind it is pretty neat.

Apple and EMI have devised another way to pry precious dollars from your wallet. It’s called iTunes Pass, and it’s available right now. With it, music fans will gain access to exclusive songs, remixes, etc. that are automatically downloaded to your account. First band up? Depeche Mode.

You’d think that the music industry would be grateful for Apple, which, with the launch of the iTunes Store in 2003, pretty much saved its keister. Not so, according to the old gray lady! In the negotiations leading up to tiered pricing and the removal of DRM, Steve Jobs and Sony’s music chairman, Rolf Schmidt-Holtz, got into a little bit of an argument over the phone, which the paper described as “tense.” (Knowing the New York Times, “tense” probably means some pretty salty language, like in a Tarentino film.) It seems the Sony man wasn’t satisfied with the timing of the new pricing structure, and made his opinion known to Jobs on Christmas Eve. Jobs, as is his wont, had none of it, and thoroughly laid into Mr. Sony.

Hey, iPhone owners! You can now download third-party Web browsers from iTunes. So, if you’re not too keen on Mobile Safari, well, why not give these browsers a shot?

Yes, iTunes-purchased songs are no longer encumbered with DRM, but don’t think that gives you free reign to put your songs on your peer-to-peer network of choice all willy nilly. That’s because, while there’s no DRM to prevent you from sharing the songs with other people per se, the songs still have some of your personal information embedded in there.