Not too long ago, Apple introduced web-based browsing for songs and albums found in the iTunes Store… then they added 30 second streaming previews to that same interface. One could easily begin to wonder why we’d need the store integrated into the Application if Apple keeps this up — yes, they kept it up. A few days ago, people started noticing their App Store links directing to a web-based app preview before sending them to iTunes. By copying the link to an app (or album, video, etc.), you can send people directly to iTunes if you use HTML. Most developers use the copied links for their “Available on the App Store” button, and we use them for all of our app reviews.

Confused? There’s more: all of those links will now do two things… open a preview of the linked item in your web-browers and open it in iTunes. Seems a little glitchy to us. The old App Store linking capabilities appear to have disappeared. If you simply copy the link from the iTunes Store and paste it into your web-browser, it works just fine. The most common form — embedded in text or image HTML code — is where things get crazy. We don’t need it to automatically launch iTunes… at all. Couldn’t we just view it in the browser? Then we wouldn’t have to warn you that your computer will do weird things by clicking a link. We don’t really have to warn you, we’re just being nice.

One of our favorite iPhone app available on the App Store is Guitar Toolkit. Click the link; it’ll send you to the preview page — and then open iTunes. Yay! We can look at it twice! It does the same thing with music too. Unfortunately for us and developers who link to their App Store content, it looks stupid. Hopefully we’ll see this fixed soon.

Speculation is running rampant with these new additions to Apple’s website. Web-based iTunes store rumors have been around for quite some time, but Apple’s recent purchase of LaLa could mean a browser-based iTunes platform that allows you to play purchased music anywhere on any machine by logging in. Think of it as iTunes meets Pandora.

As a side note, all of the links on “apple.com/itunes” still take you to the application itself. Odd.