Apple made a minor update to the iTunes Store this week, giving customers the choice to store music and video purchases for later downloading. The new “Later” or “Download” option window appears in iOS 6 and in iTunes 11 when users purchase music, movies or TV shows. Users will need to have an iCloud account activated to use this feature.

Apple has announced that iTunes U has topped one billion downloads, an impressive number for a service launched just few years ago. Apple debuted iTunes U in 2007, expanding its library beyond laptops and computers when the company created its own iTunes U iOS app for mobile devices.

As they do every year around the holidays, Apple has published the “App Store Best of 2012.” The annual list was previously known as “iTunes Rewind.” Apple’s staff has chosen their favorite list of winners and runners-up for this year in music, movies, TV shows, books, podcasts and apps.

Apple has updated iTunes v11 to fix a few bugs and bring back duplicate finder functionality. Apple has also made some stability enhancements to their iTunes Music Store. iTunes v11.0.1 will squash a bug that prevented users from seeing their purchased items in iTunes Match subscription service, along with an issue that kept the AirPlay icon from showing up.

Last Week, Apple’s iTunes 11 was finally released to the public, offering new features and a resigned interface. However, many Apple forum users have been voicing concerns about critical software bugs found in the new software. Now, AllThingsD’s Walt Mossberg has reported that Apple will soon be launching a software update for iTunes 11.

Traditionally, the only way to redeem iTunes Gift Card codes was by typing the unique 16-character code into your computer or iDevice. In iTunes 11, Apple has added the ability to snap a photo of the code using your computer’s camera. Once users have done that, iTunes will verify the code and automatically transfer the funds to the user’s iTunes account.

iTunes 11 brings a new user interface to Apple’s “viewing, listening, browsing, and shopping” software, along with deeper integration with their iCloud service, which allows users to sync and share media content with several Apple devices. The update also supports social media clients such as Facebook and Twitter. This also means users can finally say good-bye to Apple’s failed Ping music-oriented social networking service.

Back in September, Apple’s gave a preview of the redesigned iTunes 11 at their iPhone 5 media event. An October release was estimated at that point, but it seems we now won’t be getting on our hands on the new version iTunes until the end of November, according to a statement from Apple.

Apple has updated its iCloud web portal, adding the ability for users to share reminders. Mac users running OS X v10.8.2 have been able to do this for some time via the Reminders app in Mountain lion, but the feature was limited to the Mac. With iCloud support, it should now work easily across multiple platforms.

When Apple unveiled iCloud on June 6, 2011, and announced they’d be shutting down MobileMe, they handed subscribers a complimentary upgrade beyond the 5GB default that iCloud offers for free. That storage upgrade was set to expire on September 30th of this year, but Apple has announced it’ll be extended until September 30th, 2013.