Itunes

As worldwide attention focuses on Apple's problem-riddled Maps app, another Apple miscue is about to be quietly put to rest. This month, Apple's iTunes music social network -- Ping -- began displaying a sign notifying users that the network was no longer accepting new users and will shut down Sunday. Ping's closing comes as little surprise. Apple plans to update iTunes next month and will integrate it with Facebook and Twitter, letting users "Like" and share songs, apps and other pieces of content.

Apple has officially revealed the iPhone 5, but do you know what else Apple announced? Here's everything. iPhone 5 The iPhone 5 was everything we expected it to be. The latest version of the phone now comes with a larger, 4-inch screen, a new A6 processor that's twice as fast as its predecessor, and for the first time the Apple smartphone will have 4G LTE connectivity. PHOTOS: Apple iPhone 5 Apple also claims the iPhone is the thinnest smartphone on the planet and 20% lighter than the iPhone 4S. The device also features Apple's new Lightning Connector.

Apple announced a new version of iTunes on Wednesday. The Cupertino tech company said its music program and the iTunes Store have both been redesigned and given new features. Now users can click on albums to expand them in place, and artists can now also share photos with users. A new feature called "Up Next" that lets users see a pop-up window with a list of songs coming up on their playlist has also been added. The new iTunes will launch next month. The store itself will look more like the new version of the iOS iTunes Store, which is set to launch with iOS 6 later this month.

At a Wednesday morning press conference in San Francisco dominated by iPhone 5 news, Apple also announced that it would open up iTunes to Facebook and Twitter integration in October, among other changes the company will make to its online marketplace. The move effectively shelves Apple's previous internal efforts at creating its own social network for music listeners, called Ping. Instead, iTunes users will be able to "like" songs and "share" their iTunes purchases on Facebook and Twitter.

Apple is now the most valuable public company in history. Let's say that again: Most. Valuable. Company. Ever. Amazing. The tech giant's stock has once again hit a new high, giving it a market value of about $622 billion in intraday trading. That whips the previous record of $618.9 billion set by Microsoft on Dec. 30, 1999, at the tippy-top of the dot-com bubble. However, that doesn't take into account inflation. In inflation-adjusted dollars, Microsoft was worth about $850 billion in its heyday.

A new compilation of 14 of the Beatles' most musically, socially or politically influential songs is being released today, July 24, as a digital iTunes exclusive. The collection,  “Tomorrow Never Knows,” nearly spans the group's entire recording career, from “You Can't Do That” in 1964 to “I've Got a Feeling” from the final album released by the Fab Four, “Let It Be,” in 1970. The album also includes “Revolution,” “Paperback Writer,” “And Your Bird Can Sing” and “Hey Bulldog,” among a dozen John Lennon-Paul McCartney compositions, along with a pair of George Harrison's contributions, “It's All Too Much” and “Savoy Truffle.” The choice of “Tomorrow Never Knows” as the title will benefit from the high-profile exposure that song from the “Revolver” album recently received with its placement in the hit TV series “Mad Men.” It's essentially an iTunes play list any Beatles fan could assemble for himself or herself, but instead of paying the going iTunes rate of $1.29 per track individually, the “Tomorrow Never Knows” collection is being offered for $7.99, in effect a 56% discount on this batch of Beatles tracks.

Add "unorthodox release scheduling" to the many reasons why Frank Ocean is likely the most exciting artist in music right now. In an interview with the BBC Radio 1's Zane Lowe,  the avant-R&B singer-songwriter attested that the sudden appearance of his album "Channel Orange" on iTunes a week before its scheduled release on July 17 was no accident. "It was actually the plan all along," he told Lowe on Thursday, according to MTV. "I kinda wanted to mirror what ... Jay and Kanye did with 'Watch the Throne,' preventing the leak by staggering digital and physical dates.

Maria Hawkins Cole, a singer who performed with Duke Ellington and Count Basie before marrying Nat “King” Cole, has died. She was 89. Cole, who had been living in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla.,  died Tuesday of cancer, her family announced. Born Maria Hawkins in Boston in 1922, she sang with Duke Ellington, the Mills Brothers, Count Basie and others before she met Nat “King” Cole, the jazz singer and pianist who broke barriers as a black entertainer on network television in the 1950s.

Apple reportedly is working on a revamped version of iTunes that it plans to unveil before the year ends. Among the biggest changes coming to iTunes, which hasn't received a major overhaul since its launch in 2003, will be closer integration with iCloud and more features to improve the discoverability of the available content in Apple's digital store. After Apple launched iCloud last summer, it's been working the cloud computing service more closely into many of its services.

Apple expanded its iTunes Store to Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and nine other countries Wednesday, but  the tech giant did not include India or China in its latest expansion into Asia. The Cupertino, Calif., company announced the expansion of the digital store Wednesday, saying it will hit the new areas with more than 20 million songs, including local and international music. The other countries included in Apple's expansion are Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Macao, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Sri Lanka and Vietnam.