iTunes Store US is the main online store of Apple’s digital distribution business with millions of music and videos available. While we have our own Philippine iTunes Store the sad reality is the Philippine store is limited to iOS and Mac OS Apps only. I’ve read it somewhere that this is due to copyright (ehem piracy) reasons. Don’t be sad because this is not a Philippine only restriction. Many of the south east asian countries have the same fate. I have a post here about the “Five reasons why you might need a US iTunes account”.

There are already a handful of options buying an iTunes Gift Card in the Philippines. But whats different here is that, with this method you’ll be able to get it the same price as the card. A US$50 card will cost you the same no extra “tubo” mark-up.

You have two options to do this:

1. Bestbuy.com – Best Buy accepts Philippine issued credit card. Make an account first and make your billing address a US address, say a Starbucks in San Francisco.
2. Walmart.com - An alternative method but you need a US issued credit card. They also sell it at a discount, last December they sell a $50 card for $40 only.

The above links are specific to to a $50 Gift Card. You can search for a $10, $15 and $25 denominations just make sure its an email delivery card. As I hinted these are all digital delivery, the codes will be emailed to you after few minutes so make sure your email is valid.

The Philippine iTunes Store is limited to buying iOS apps only. Many of the prime features are not available due to copyright reasons. Here are the five reasons why you might need a US iTunes account.

1. Music – Filipinos love music no doubt about it, and with 20 million + songs in the US iTunes store (with some OPM ones) it is nice  to support the Artists that made the songs that you really like. The average price is US$0.99 – 1.99 per song only and its very easy to make a purchase on the iPhone and iPad. Also as of 2009 all songs downloaded from the iTunes store are now DRM free! Meaning you can use it on any device that you own like music players and including playing it with USB sticks.
2. Movies and TV Shows – Apple is the first successful digital music distribution store and the #1 out there in terms of sales right now. Since they are the forefather and leader in the digital music distribution business, they’ve entered the Movies and TV show distribution too. Unfortunately, production and film companies are allergic distributing their products to the rest of the world. The US iTunes Store is one of the best online store to get your rental and digital purchases and again if you are Apple devices “stock holder” like me, you can play all of these seamlessly on all your iDevices specially on the Apple TV.
3. iTunes Match – This is part of the iCloud, Lion OS and iOS 5 powerhouse and Apple just turned the switch last November. iTunes Match is a cloud based service where it magically check your songs to match it in their existing online library so you don’t have to upload every songs from your computer.  Whats more interesting is that your long time crappy 128kbps bit rate songs can now be downloaded as 256kbps. I’ve just subscribed this week and interestingly almost all of my OPM songs were matched by the service.
4. Apps – For some reason there are apps that are only available in the US iTunes App store. Examples are Shazam, FB Messenger and Google+ on its launch to name a few. Kindly note that this also apply in the Mac OS App store.
5. FREE Music and Videos – Yes while the US iTunes Store is a paid service, Apple regularly publish free tracks and videos weekly and occasionally. I’ve downloaded a whole Starbucks Album and Christmas Songs last last year during a promo post on their Facebook page.

There you have it, I will try a follow up post on how to create a US iTunes account even if you are in the Philippines. My problem right now is that the rainy weather is so good that my eyes are falling. Have a good sunday.

Wall of Video provides an easy way playing thru a wall of movie and TV posters. It’s a clever idea because many times we remember the poster art work than the movie titles. Obviously Wall of Video library comes from Apple because when you click on the download button it directs you to the iTunes Store.

This app is available on both iPhone and iPad as a universal app.

UPDATE: Not all of the videos comes from Apple

If you are an Engadget fan you’ll love this free magazines at the Newsstand, the title is Distro. I’m not sure why but head on to your iOS Newsstand to download it while its free. There are 20 editions to enjoy.

After 2 days my iTunes Match is finally resting. It matched half of the 3,680 songs then half were the ones who made the process long, thanks to slow uploads. So imagine if you have 25,000 in your library and 20,000 of are unmatched. One of the tricks is delete the songs that you really don’t like. I’ll be posting a tutorial and thoughts about this service soon…

Some of the interesting announcements made today.

New Improved MacBook Pro Family

• Speed bumps
• Longer Battery life up to 7 hours
• SD Slot
• No more MacBook Unibody

iPhone 3Gs

• Digital compass
• 3mp camera
• Camera: AF, AWB and VGA Video recording
• Slightly increased battery life
• Many more software enhancements via iPhone OS 3.0
• 2x speed improvement
• Data tethering

Save the dates and prepare your deposit slips

Mac OS X Snow Leopard will be available in September. Upgrade will be $29 only

iPhone 3G 8GB will now be the low-end iPhone selling it for $99 with carrier contracts

iPhone OS 3.0 will be available on June 17 $9.95 for upgrade

iPhone 3Gs will be on sale on June 19 $199 16GB, $299 32GB

Via www.apple.com

Was twittering like crazy last night while reading Engadget’s live blog and watching / listening to Ustream .

Now gadget lust is acting up again..

If Globe Telecom will allow data tethering I’ll probably buy the iPhone 3Gs because I’m now in the market of buying an iPod Touch.

The new refined unibody MBP seems to be a sensible upgrade because of the 7 hours* battery life but I’ll try not to since my current last gen aluminum MBP still serves what I need. Frankly, a Mac Pro can be a reasonable one if the price is not so prohibiting, this will best paired with my 5D Mark II’s 21mp image files and Full HD videos. But I’ll definitely upgrade to Snow Leopard irregardless.

It’s the year of financial breakdowns for many and it seems these tools “gizmos” are magnets to our hard earned cash. I know myself, sometimes I just need to be flooded with the tech specs and my GL (gadget lust) will diminished. I hope that will work again.

But “one more thing” I really like the new iPhone 3Gs, I already skipped 2 generations and just settled with s60 symbian smartphones like the e61i and e71.

Images by www.apple.com