Apple breaks out new ad for former adversary Paul McCartney album

Apple is showing no hard feelings in the wake of its final settlement with lawyers representing the business interests of Sir Paul McCartney and the other ex-Beatles.

This month McCartney rolled out his new album on the Apple iTunes service, making it accessible in minutes to the tens or hundreds of millions of MS-Windows and Macintosh users.

Last night I saw an iTunes ad written around the new McCartney album and the rocker himself. It was pretty good. Very colorful and creative blend of art, technology, and video. Appropriate, it seems - for the newest blockbuster product on the iTunes service.

A couple of decades ago I was awestruck by the initial Apple TV ad - the ominous yet encouraging "1984" TV commercial.

Nowadays, Apple ads are infinitely more playful and warm. The steaks are no longer life-and-death for Apple, its platform, or its user community.

Now, it is just good, clean fun!

The adoption of entertainment products and services into the Apple core product line families has really transformed the company and a few industries. Just about everyone would say - a lot for the better.

It has given marketeers for Apple a whole new audience to play with too.

iTunes 7.1 released by Apple

Hey, iTunes 7.1 is out!

Apple v. Apple is over, for good

Yesterday computer company Apple announced that it had gotten the full rights to the Apple name from the old record label of the Beatles.

So the lawyers of the label will no longer be suing the computer company over the similarities between the names of the two firms.

Steve Jobs will not be receiving any more lawsuits from them every time he rolls out a new music-related product or service, as was the case in the past.

Apple recently shortened its corporate name from Apple Computer to simply Apple, in recognition of the fact it was now active in many computer, software, accessory, Internet, and music/video entertainment services. Apple is not just a computer company any more.

Steve Jobs also had a lot of Beatles music and album art installed in the library of the iTunes application he was demoing at MacWorld back in January.

Perhaps this was a none-too-subtle way of indicating that some positive steps were in the offing back then toward bringing the two corps together on friendly terms.

Based on comments legal representation for Apple Records made a couple months or so back, the music of The Beatles might find itself for sale at the iTunes Store sometime soon.