iCloud to Debut for Free, Rolling Stones' Publisher Disses iPad, and the Surprising Price One Man Pays for Apple Products

Every week, makes news with technology developments, business deals and, more often than not, controversies.

That’s where our weekly "Core Bytes" column on Apple comes in. We’ll relay the past week’s news highlights from our favorite backyard tech giant.

Controversies
• Can magazines find a successful platform on the iPad? Rolling Stones’ publisher Jann Wenner is more than a little skeptical, as he slammed magazines’ rush to embrace the the shiny new device as “sheer insanity” in an interview with Advertising Age. According to Wenner, it will be a few decades before magazines on tablet devices take off.

• A 17-year old boy in China allegedly wanted an iPad and iPod so badly that he sold his kidney in order to gain the money to purchase them. China is one of the biggest markets for Apple products, with 25 stores in the works.

New Products and Services
• Eager to try out the new iCloud digital music service? To reign in more users, Apple is apparently offering the new service for free to iTunes Music Store customers. But eventually they plan to charge a $25 a year subscription fee. It’s still, to use an apt expression, up in the air about when the service will be launched, but Apple has secured deals with four major record labels as of this Thursday.

• Apple is playing around with the idea of adding an infrared system to the iPhone. Such a system would prevent illegal recordings of music. For example, a band could place infrared transmitters around a stage, which would be picked up by the iPhone, banning all video and audio tapings. Bad news for citizen journalists, but good news for the movie and music industry, whom CNET wrote would become “BFFs” with Cupertino.

• In less than 140 characters: Twitter may soon be integrated into the next version of iOs, Apple’s operating system for the iPhone.

Business Deals and Developments
• Apple is not hesitating to spread its iCloud service worldwide. After confirming the service on Tuesday, it filed a trademark with the European Trademark Office for a range of classes, not limited to “online social networking services,” and “photographic services.” But the company first filed for the trademark in another corner of the world, Jamaica, last December.

• Apple has risen to the No. 2 spot in the U.S. smartphone market, with 26 percent of all users, according to a just-released comScore report from the first quarter. Google’s Android phone steads the top spot, with 36 percent of all 74.6 million smartphone users.