• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, June 7, 2011

Despite the absence of any jaw-dropping gadget launches, Apple is successfully causing a stir at its annual developers conference this week.  Of great importance to Madison Avenue, "A year after being shown off as a ‘tentpole' feature of iPhone software, Apple's [iAd] mobile advertising business didn't earn a single mention" on Monday, notes Business Insider.

Worse still, "Apple CEO Steve Jobs even took the opportunity to trash ads," BI notes. "While discussing Apple's free, new iCloud email service, he took an apparent jab at Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and the others, which stuff ads in their free email services."

"No ads," said Jobs. "We build products that we want for ourselves, too, and we just don't want ads."

A deep integration of Twitter and Apple's new iOS 5 mobile operating system also struck a nerve. "It's not just that you'll be able to post to Twitter from inside official Apple apps like photos and maps," explains ReadWriteWeb. "Any third party iOS developer will be able to leverage a number of Twitter Application Programming Interfaces ... to make their apps better and more social."

Also of note, "The iOS 5 upgrade introduces a lot of changes for Apple's mobile operating system, but iMessages is one of the most significant," GigaOm writes. "It lets iPad, iPhone and iPod touch owners send messages back and forth, including photos, videos, locations and contacts, all free of charge and without limits. If you're thinking it's the BlackBerry Messenger of the iOS world, you'd be right, and that's bad news for RIM, but also for carriers."

Meanwhile, CNNMoney sends content owners a clear warning with the headline, "Apple offers music pirates permanent amnesty for $24.99." Heads up, Universal and Sony, because CNNMonday's Philip Elmer-DeWitt admits: "Of the 5,364 items in my iTunes music library, 143 are songs I purchased on Apple's iTunes store. The vast majority were ripped from my old CD collection. A few were obtained by other means."