“30 Rock,” “The Wire” and “Battlestar Galactica” are among the TV shows honored in iTunes 2008, Apple’s (AAPL) comprehensive — and surprisingly opinionated — year-end review. [iTunes link]

Available through what used to be called the iTunes Music Store, iTunes 2008 covers all the media the online venue now serves up: movies, TV, audiobooks, podcasts, iPhone apps and music in genres ranging from Alternative to World.

Most categories are represented by software-generated lists of top sellers — often a good way to find out what your kids are listening to or what you might be missing. The lists of free and paid iPhone Apps are particularly useful — and have been getting the most attention in the blogosphere (see here).

But who knew, for example, that videos of talks from the TED technology conferences, which cost $3,750 if you want to watch them live in Monterey or Palm Springs, are now available for free through iTunes? In 2008, TEDTalks were the No. 2 most popular podcasts in the Classics: Video slot.

In several categories, however, Apple has gone beyond simply publishing top-10 lists and started making judgments about which books or shows are not just popular, but worthy of our attention. Apparently, it’s not enough that Apple delivers the lion’s share of our digital content; now it wants to dictate our tastes as well.

This is not the first time Apple has offered opinions through iTunes; witness its regular “staff favorites” and “what we’re watching” lists. But this is the first time the iTunes Store’s editorial voice has come through quite so forcefully.

“Proof positive that TV can be literature,” begins the 54-word review of “The Wire, Season 5,” iTunes’ choice for best drama of 2008. “Human tragedies and triumphs are always center stage.”

Or see its thumbnail summary of the pilot for “Breaking Bad,” iTunes’ pick for best single episode in a dramatic series:

“Bryan Cranston’s slow-burn descent into dealing crystal meth is less a guilty pleasure than a tragic look at the unexpected choices we have to make to support our families. Desperate measures, indeed.”

Who writes this stuff? And what’s next, Ebert & Roeper on Koi Pond and Lightsaber Unleashed?

Last we checked, the full catalog of Beatles songs was supposed to be available for sale on the iTunes Store before the end of 2008.

Well, it’s not happening this year, according to one of the band’s two surviving members, and for all we know it may never happen.

“The last word I got back was it’s stalled at the whole moment, the whole process,” Paul McCartney told reporters gathered Monday for the media launch of his latest album, Electric Arguments. (link)

Where’s Fake Steve Jobs when we need him?

Nobody was better at cutting through the posturing, lawyering and stonewalling by Apple Inc. (AAPL), the Beatles’ Apple Corps and EMI that have kept the world’s best-selling musical act off the world’s largest digital music store lo these many years. (EMI owns the rights to Beatles recordings, but must get permission from Apple Corps to release them in new formats.)

A year ago, McCartney told Billboard.com that the deal was all but signed. “The whole thing is primed, ready to go — there’s just maybe one little sticking point left, and I think it’s being cleared up as we speak, so it shouldn’t be too long. It’s down to fine-tuning.” (link)

“Let me put that statement into American English,” Dan Lyons (a.k.a. Fake Steve Jobs) wrote at the time. “Paul wants more money.” (link)

Now, a year later, the sticking points seem to have multiplied.

At Monday’s press conference, Sir Paul was asked once again when the Beatles were coming to iTunes. Here, according to Billboard.biz, was his full reply:

“That is constantly being talked of, we’d like to do it,” said McCartney. “What happens is, when something’s as big as The Beatles, it’s heavy negotiations.

“We are very for it, we’ve been pushing it. But there are a couple of sticking points, I understand. So the last word I got back was that it had stalled, the whole process.

“They [EMI] want something we’re not prepared to give them. Hey, sounds like the music business.

“It’s between EMI and The Beatles. What else is new.” (link)

EMI, in response, issued this statement:

“We have been working hard to secure agreement with Apple Corps. to make the Beatles’ legendary recording catalog available to fans in digital form. Unfortunately the various parties involved have been unable to reach agreement but we really hope everyone can make progress soon.” (link)

Translation: Paul wants more money.

Or maybe Yoko Ono is the problem. One of the classic entries in the Secret Diary of Steve Jobs — before Lyons gave it up to write full-time for Newsweek (and before Newsweek finally muzzled the Real Dan Lyons) — was the scene in which he imagined Jobs and Yoko trying to thrash out an agreement in John Lennon’s old apartment in Manhattan. (The deal falls apart on Yoko’s insistence that the band be billed as  “John Lennon and the Beatles” with Yoko listed as the fifth Beatle.) (link)

The irony is that the parties involved have dragged their heels for so long that much of the deal’s original value may have evaporated. Most everyone who cares about the Beatles has already filled their iPods with songs ripped from the CDs. Meanwhile, as Peter Kafka reports on All Things Digital, the boom in digital music sales seems to be slowing, which could make even the digital Beatles harder to sell. (link)

If Sir Paul is really waiting for a better offer, he — and the Beatles fans — could be waiting for a very long time.

[Photo: The Beatles' Feb. 7, 1964 New York press conference, courtesy of Apple Corps.]

One of the unintended consequences of the success of the iPhone is that it has rendered the classic iPod and its diminutive sisters — the nano and the shuffle — nearly irrelevant. What do you need a second MP3 player for if you’ve already got a few hundred tunes in your pocket?

Apple (AAPL) was able to goose sales for a while last spring by sharply cutting prices on the iPod shuffle, but the tide is drifting away from the company’s iconic product — which once accounted for nearly 50% of its annual revenue. By last Christmas, sales of iPods, which enjoyed triple-digit growth as recently as 2006, had nearly flattened out. If something isn’t done, they could soon be headed south.

Enter Steve Jobs, who is expected to appear in person at the Yerba Buena Center for the Performing Arts in San Francisco next Tuesday for a special media event entitled “Let’s Rock.” Jobs has made an annual ritual of introducing new iPods in September — giving the company plenty of time to ramp up for holiday sales. In 2005 the star of the show was the original iPod nano. Last year it was the iPod touch.

This year, according to several converging rumor threads, Jobs will introduce a brand new edition of the iPod nano, a slightly modified iPod touch and a jazzed up version of the iTunes software that feeds content to them both. The details:

• iPod nano. Adding to — and correcting — last week’s rumor of an iPod nano with a long, curved screen, iLounge on Wednesday released blueprint-like specifications for what it claims is the new nano. The specs suggest that this will be the longest and skinniest iPod yet. A new image carried by MacRumors Thursday appears to show the same device.
• iPod touch. iLounge also published blueprints for the iPod touch, which seems to be getting a more modest redesign to bring it (and its manufacturing processes) more in line with the iPhone 3G. The device is also rumored to be due for a simultaneous memory upgrade and price cut to bring the $299 8 gig iPod touch more in line with the $199 8 gig iPhone 3G.
• iTunes 8. According to Digg’s Kevin Rose — whose credibility as an Apple prognosticator rose after he correctly predicted the date of the Sept. 9 event (see Apple’s Fall product lineup) — iTunes is set for a “big update” that includes a Pandora-like music recommendation engine and new tools to let users download HD versions of their favorite TV shows and sync them to selected iPods (specifically, the 4th generation nano, the 2nd generation classic and the 2nd generation touch). [See below the fold for a guide to the various generations of iPods.]

Will these changes be enough to bring back the days of double- or triple-digit sales growth? Probably not. But if the price cuts are steep enough and there are enough new and interesting things you can do with iPods — like download applications from the App Store — the latest versions could find their way onto Christmas wish lists for a few more years.

Below the fold: A taxonomy of iPods, past and present:

Apple issued two nice round numbers on Thursday.

First, it announced that the number of songs purchased and downloaded from the iTunes store since it opened on April 28, 2003 has passed the 5 billion mark. This represents a continued acceleration of music sales. It took Apple (AAPL) nearly three years to sell its first billion songs (Feb 23, 2006), ten months to sell its second billion (Jan. 6, 2007), seven months to sell its third (July 31, 2007) five and a half to sell its fourth (Jan. 15, 2008), and five months to sell its fifth (June 19, 2008).

It’s harder to put Apple’s second announcement — that movies are now being purchased or rented from the iTunes store at the rate of more than 50,000 a day — in perspective. Apple has been selling videos since 2005, but at first those were strictly music videos and TV shows. Movies came later, mostly from Disney. By April 2007, Apple was able to announce that it had sold more than 2 million movies. Movie rentals didn’t start until January of this year, when Hollywood finally opened its film vaults, but it’s probably fair to assume that rentals represent the larger part of the more than 50,000 titles being downloaded every day. At that rate, Apple is selling or renting 1.5 million movies a month and should have another nice round number for us by Macworld 2009.

Apple now claims that the iTunes store is the No. 1 music retailer in the U.S. and the world’s most popular online movie store.

The company has never revealed how much money it makes on each song or video it delivers; it claims to run the iTunes store at “just above break even.” Independent estimates put its profit margin on music sales at 10% to 30% percent.