As much as we’d like the Tapplet, or iPad, to make its debut next month, it’s looking like that won’t be the case. “Sources close to the company” say that the event will be on September 9th and will most assuredly not be Tablet-related. Instead, like last year’s September announcement, it’ll be new iPods and possibly that fancy new iTunes we’ve been hearing about.

While the inclusion of yet more services into Apple’s increasingly bloated all-purpose media player may be seen as excessive, you can always count on Apple to at least sell it.

You may wanna jump on this Best Buy iTunes deal if you drop serious coin on iTunes. It’s kind of like when restaurants and gas stations offer specials when you pre-pay for their services. Except this time you get music, movies, and apps.

Ahhh, Apple. Their followers are always fanatical, spending days dreaming away when and what the next product announcement will be. I bet Dell and HP wish they had this kind of following. Since September is typically when Apple announces their new products, the webs are all abuzz with people guessing what new shiny thing will be coming out. Some are even writing wish lists, but of course like an abusive parent, Apple will snub them and ignore their cries for attention.

Remember yesterday when I noted, by way of TorrentFreak, that the RIAA had all but considered DRM to be dead? Not true! Not true at all.

And yet another game of cat and mouse begins.

Over the past 24 hours, Apple has released updates for both iTunes and the iPhone beta SDK. While both are seemingly minor on the feature front, each packs a bit of disappointment for those who had been using loopholes to their advantage.

DoubleTwist, a universal media management desktop application for Macs and PCs, not only has a clever marketing team behind it but also seems to be something a lot of people have been waiting for. The free software, which works like a multi-platform version of iTunes with a social networking component, has been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times since it launched in February (exact number aren’t disclosed for the time being).

Users can share music files, photos or videos across (almost) any device via drag and drop and share the files with others. DoubleTwist’s main selling point: It supports hundreds of devices, from cell phones or mobile gaming devices to portable music players. For example, the software can sync all music files you bought on iTunes with your Blackberry, Nokia phone, Kindle or Sony PSP without you having to worry about file format compatibility. Media files can then be uploaded to sites like Flickr, Facebook or YouTube from within doubleTwist.

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.