Jailbreakers may find it more difficult to find pirated apps from the App Store thanks to Apple's latest legal maneuvers. The company has reportedly been sending DMCA takedown notices to Apptrackr, a popular service for tracking down cracked apps, in order to try and cut off pirated app downloads at the source.

According to Apptrackr developer "Dissident" (via ), Apple has apparently scraped links from the Apptrackr service and sent "huge takedown notices" to cut off access to pirated apps. To try and work around the copyright issues, Apptrackr has moved its servers outside the US and is using a form of redirection to avoid "direct" links to infringing content.

To what level piracy affects App Store developers remains a matter of debate. Some developers have used checks built in to their apps to determine piracy rates . If each pirated copy were counted as a sale, it would add up to a —on the order of millions of dollars given the sales volume of the App Store. Still, every pirated copy doesn't necessarily equal a sale, and many developers don't feel it's worth the effort to work against pirates, many of whom would never have bought the app in the first place.

"Dissident" echoes these sentiments on the . He claims the service is meant to allow users to test apps before buying, as Apple offers no mechanism to do so via the App Store, but he acknowledged that Apptrackr is often used to simply avoid paying for apps.

"It's undeniable that a portion of our community pirates rather than tests the applications that they install," Dissident wrote on the site's "about us" section. "They were very, very likely never potential customers in the first place. Piracy's conversion rate is absurdly low, and developers know that."

Chinese customers will soon be able to buy the iPhone 4S without having to import the device from elsewhere, as Apple on Wednesday that it would launch the iPhone 4S there and 21 other countries on January 13. But unlike your other run-of-the-mill international launches, the Chinese launch of the iPhone 4S will play a significant role in the device's—and Apple's—success in the coming quarters, largely thanks to the country's rapid rate of economic growth and increasing demand for Apple products.

Apple CEO Tim Cook said in October during the that the company's revenues from China were up 270 percent year-over-year, with China accounting for 12 percent of all revenues during all of fiscal 2011 (up from just 2 percent in fiscal 2009). According to Cook, Apple's growth in China is "growing at a feverish pace," adding that China is an "area of enormous opportunity" and that the country has now claimed Apple's number two spot in the list of top revenue countries.

"How far can it go? Certainly in my lifetime I've never seen a country with as many people rising into the middle class who aspire to buy products that Apple makes," Cook said on the call. "In China, the sky is the limit there."

That's why the official launch of the iPhone 4S in China will be a feeding frenzy. There are already plenty of iPhones of all generations in China because of the massive import market, but customers will undoubtedly prefer to buy their new iPhones directly from Apple (and especially in those new, fancy Chinese Apple Stores). The other countries that will see the iPhone 4S launch this Friday are Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Bolivia, Botswana, British Virgin Islands, Cameroon, Cayman Islands, Central African Republic, China, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Grenada, Guam, Guinea Conakry, Ivory Coast, Jamaica, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritius, Niger, Senegal, St. Vincent and The Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos, and Uganda.

Apple may be poised to announce changes coming to iBooks, and perhaps eBook publishing, sometime this month. In particular, we believe the announcement may have important reverberations for textbook publishers and buyers.

According to a report by All Things Digital published Monday, the company is in New York to make a "media-related," not hardware-related announcement. Further, sources for TechCrunch claimed the announcement will focus on "improvements to the iBooks platform," and the event will supposedly be  (not necessarily consumers).

Apple has recently highlighted the ability of its iBooks platform to include sound, video, and other features by offering a free eBook of The Yellow Submarine. And based on information from our own sources, we believe the announcement could likely involve support for the , which enables a wider variety of multimedia and interaction features. Amazon its own similarly improved eBook standard using HTML5 and CSS3.

Several authors have also told Ars that they long for tools to help transform book text into standards-compliant eBooks. The opportunity certainly seems ripe for Apple to offer such a tool. If Apple created software that could generate standards-compliant EPUB files, it could be a boon to both the publishing industry and independent authors alike.

Incidentally, one source who has worked with Apple to integrate technology in education recently suggested that Apple may have important changes coming to its iBooks platform directed specifically toward the academic set. Digital textbooks represent another nascent market that Apple could potentially upend as it did with music and mobile apps.

The slow week between Christmas and New Year is finally almost over, but it wasn't a boring week in Apple news here at Ars. We compared five different podcast apps for iOS, discussed potential fixes to the problem of iMessages going to stolen iPhones, discussed Apple's latest patent award from the USPTO, and did a hands-on with Airfoil. Need a refresher? That's what we're here for. 

: The iPhone and other iOS devices let you listen to podcasts out of the box, but five third-party iOS apps show that there are better, or at least different, ways to skin this particular cat.

: Italy guarantees consumers the right to a two-year warranty on products they purchase, leading Apple to face fines for pushing warranty plans to extend its standard one year of support.

What we wouldn't give to watch a "Blue Busters," a company video made by Apple employees—yes, including Steve Jobs—posing as IBM-fighting Ghost Busters. Such a video does exist, and it's currently housed at Stanford University's Silicon Valley Archives as part of a collection donated by Apple and its employees. The location of the archive is in the San Francisco Bay area and its address is top secret (it's not currently open to the public), but Stanford to give the organization a peek as to what kinds of historical tidbits might be hidden inside.

According to the AP, Apple itself had been collecting historical items about the company for years in order to eventually open its own Apple history museum. Those plans were dashed, however, when cofounder and eventual CEO Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997—Jobs, at the time, made it his goal to to save money, and the museum ended up falling under the butcher's knife. Instead, the company called up Stanford, which was glad to take the collection off Apple's hands. Since the donation, other company executives, early employees, and even enthusiasts have donated their own items to the archives.

Besides this never-to-be-seen Ghost Busters parody video, what might be contained within these archives? Financial records from early sales of the Apple II, documents from a $5,000 loan made to Apple in 1976, blueprints from the first Apple computer, and more. "Through this one collection you can trace out the evolution of the personal computer," Stanford historian Leslie Berlin told the AP. "These sorts of documents are as close as you get to the unmediated story of what really happened."

We may not have heard much about patent licensing firm Lodsys in recent months, but independent app developers are still working together to fight the patent bully. —a growing group of iOS developers pooling their ideas and resources to fight back against Lodsys—has continued to take steps to protect themselves from the kind of litigation brought by Lodsys and its apparent parent company Intellectual Ventures since they formed in August. But although progress has been made over the last five months, there's still a long way to go before indie devs feel protected.

Lodsys began its war against independent and in the first part of 2011, soon expanding its targets to and . The firm accused them of infringing on an that, at least on the iOS side, was made available to developers via Apple's own APIs. As it turns out, Apple already pays for a license for the technology in question through an agreement with the patent's original holder, a company called Intellectual Ventures—a firm that conveniently about its relationship to Lodsys, but appears to have direct ties. The agreement with Apple, however, didn't stop Lodsys from a legal assault on small-scale developers in an apparent attempt to bully them into settlements.

A French computer reseller has filed a lawsuit against Apple, claiming the company is unfairly undercutting its partners with its own retail operations. Francois Prudent, CEO of France's largest Apple reseller eBizcuss, told French newspaper  (hat tip to ) that Apple is withholding its most popular products to stock its own stores and offering businesses significant discounts that eBizcuss can't possibly match.

The lawsuit alleges that eBizcuss's business is down 30 percent because it can't get its hands on the MacBook Air, iPad 2, or iPhone 4S. Demand for those products has been high, but Prudent claimed that Apple first stocks its own stores before giving products to resellers, giving the company's retail operations an unfair advantage. Apple also reportedly required eBizcuss to improve its point-of-sale system to the tune of $6.5 million, which it can't recoup due to lost sales. Adding insult to injury, Prudent said that Apple is taking away its business customers by offering quotes that are below the wholesale prices offered to resellers.

This isn't the first time the resellers have complained about Apple moving in on their turf and using unfair tactics to steal away customers. Apple was in California in 2005, shortly after the company began opening its own retail stores. Several California resellers made almost identical claims as eBizcuss against Apple, with one claiming that it went out of business because Apple sold products at a net loss in its own stores. That case is still pending in Santa Clara County Superior Court.

Another reseller, MacSolutions, in 2006, which was settled the following year.

As some of you who follow my coverage may know, I like using my Apple TV. More specifically, I'm a fan of using AirPlay to stream media to my Apple TV. For those unfamiliar, AirPlay allows iOS and iTunes users to stream media like music, video, and photos to an AirPlay-enabled device—in my case, an Apple TV is the only one of those devices I own, but Apple also allows third-party speaker manufacturers to license AirPlay so that they can receive streamed audio. And of course, you can still stream audio to an AirPort Express, which itself can be hooked up to any manner of speakers you like. 

My primary uses for AirPlay usually involve streaming Pandora from my iPhone to my TV (the main speakers for my living room), and passing around an iPad when friends are over so we can easily browse and watch funny YouTube videos on the big screen. (The Apple TV has its own built-in YouTube app, but trust me: when friends are over, it's easier and more fun to use the iPad as a YouTube video selection device.) On occasion, I also stream my iPad's screen to the Apple TV in order to show off an app or a game I'm playing.

But, as with many things made by Apple, AirPlay's capabilities can be somewhat limited—especially when it comes to streaming from a computer. Sure, you can stream music from within iTunes on both a Mac and PC, but when it comes to anything outside of the iTunes universe, users are out of luck. And as I have discovered recently, there are potentially many non-iTunes apps that you may want to stream media from. For example, you might be listening to a great playlist on Spotify on your Mac and don't want to switch over to an iOS device in order to stream it (as I am right now, in fact, as I write this). Perhaps you're listening to a speech in Safari that you'd like to stream to your TV. Or maybe you're just watching a movie on your computer but want to stream the audio to your higher-quality AirPlay speakers.

What a year 2011 has been in the Apple world, and not entirely for the reasons we all remember. Sure, new Macs, iPads, and iPods came out along the way, but the year was largely marked by events that reverberated within the Apple universe. After all, the Apple ecosystem is about much more than Apple itself, and new developments can take on a life of their own under the right conditions. So here are our picks for the top stories of the year from Ars Technica's Infinite Loop: