iTunes

Sometimes backing up the iPhone in iTunes during a sync takes a while. According to Apple, now there's a new way to speed up the process.

Backup times can suffer when there are a large number of photos or videos on the Camera Roll. To speed up your iPhone backup the media files must be imported to your computer, removed from the camera roll, and re-synced to the iPhone.

Could a healthy smartphone rivalry turn into all-out legal war between Palm and Apple? The Palm Pre has been found to sync effortlessly with Apple's flagship software iTunes by tricking the software into thinking it's an iPod.

The Pre is due for release on June 6th, and Apple is widely expected to release the next generation of its iPhone later this summer. Apple watchers are waiting to see what response, if any, the company will make to the revelation concerning the Pre's iTunes syncing capabilities.

When iPhone 3.0 is released it looks like TV shows, movies and music videos will be available for purchase and viewing directly on the new device. Three mobile ads from Apple were found in the latest version of TwitterFon that linked to "iTunes Movie Rentals," "iTunes Movies" and "iTunes TV."

When touched, the ads led to a video area in Apple's mobile store that was under construction. Screenshots of the portal show various genres and featured items, however video content is not yet available.

The latest iPhone OS 3.0 beta version is live for developers, and requires installation of the iTunes 8.2 pre-release for activation. Questions and speculation have arisen over a reference to Blu-ray included in the "About iTunes" window of iTunes 8.2.

The text reads: CD, DVD, Blu-ray Disc, and music and video-related data from Gracenote, Inc. Could it be possible that Apple has decided to acquire licensing for Blu-ray technology after all?