MacRumors

With fewer than three days until Black Friday, a number of developers are beginning to offer deals on their apps and software. Below, we have rounded up some of the notable discounts available for popular iOS and Mac apps and software. More deals will inevitably be announced, so keep an eye on our Black Friday roundup.

Final Fantasy Tactics

Square Enix has discounted both the iPhone and iPad versions of Final Fantasy Tactics to $3.99 for a limited time, marking the game's lowest price ever. The lowest previous sale was $6.99 for the iPhone version and $7.99 for the iPad version. Regular prices are $13.99 for iPhone and $15.99 for iPad.

TouchArcade gave the title a rather mediocre 3.5/5 stars rating back in 2011, but noted Square Enix has significantly updated the game since then. "The graphics got redrawn, iCloud support was added, making it a significantly better port than when it was first released," said editor-in-chief Eli Hodapp.

You'll be taking over a squad of characters and battling on grid-based maps in a turn-based system. As you play through, you'll be able to level up your characters, equip weapons and effects and change jobs. Since the iOS port is based on the PSP version, you'll also get an updated story, a better translation than the PS1 version and a few fancy cutscenes.

Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions is available on the App Store for iPhone [Direct Link] and iPad [Direct Link].

Lumines Puzzle and Music

Mobcast's falling-block puzzle game Lumines Puzzle and Music is on sale for just 99 cents for a limited time. The app has normally cost $2.99 since it first launched in September. Lumines universally supports both iPhone and iPad.

A mobile rebuild of the classic PSP title, LUMINES PUZZLE & MUSIC is an action packed puzzle game synchronized to a musical beat, featuring newly-produced tracks and classics such as “Shinin’” by Mondo Grosso. Players swipe and tap their screen in portrait mode to properly align their Lumines blocks to clear blocks of four matching colors in rhythm to the beat.

In Lumines, 2 x 2 blocks composed of two different colors drop in the field and begin falling. You need to move them left or right, rotate them, and drop them at the bottom of the playfield. As opposed to making lines as in Tetris, here you are trying to make 4 x 4 squares of a single color. When you do that, they will be marked for clearing. As you play, a bar is constantly moving across the field in line with the tempo of the current song. That bar will removed any marked squares you've matched up, and the remaining blocks will settle into place.

Lumines Puzzle and Music is available on the App Store for iPhone and iPad [Direct Link].

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Similar to the current confusion regarding the release date of Apple's AirPods, a couple of differing launch days for the new wireless BeatsX earphones have begun sprouting up online, leading to uncertainty over when exactly Apple will begin selling the new Beats-branded earphones.

In line with some AirPods rumors, most retailers are placing order dates in December for BeatsX. The new rumors would mean BeatsX will miss the retail rush of Black Friday and Cyber Monday coming up this week, but would place the earphones as potentially available for last-minute holiday shopping later in December.

Fry's Electronics has the earphones listed as estimated to ship on December 5, 2016. Users can add the BeatsX to their cart, but pre-orders aren't available yet as checkout can't be completed at the time of writing. The date was originally spotted by a user on Reddit.

Photo, video, and audio electronics retailer B&H also has a date listed for BeatsX, with expected availability of the earphones on December 16. Users can pre-order BeatsX at B&H, although detailed shipping estimates for them are not yet available. At both Fry's and B&H, the BeatsX earphones are listed at the expected price of $149.95.

On Apple's website, the earphones are still simply "coming this fall." As was the case with the AirPods, it's likely that most retailers are using placeholder dates for BeatsX until they receive word on the official launch. Still, since November is nearly over and there's been no word from Apple yet, there is a growing possibility that both AirPods and BeatsX will launch sometime in December, in time for holiday shopping.

The BeatsX earphones were announced during Apple's September 7 iPhone event, along with the Beats Solo3 and Powerbeats3 devices. The new line of Beats headphones have Apple's W1 chip -- also found in the AirPods -- that lets them pair easily with an iPhone. The Powerbeats3 wireless earphones launched in October.

Apple's upcoming iOS 10.2 and tvOS 10.1 updates will bring a new "TV" app where users will be able to view much of their TV and movie content from across various apps, all centrally located to make it easy to pick up where you left off and receive recommendations on additional content.

When the early beta of Single Sign-on began going live earlier this month, there were four supported TV providers, with Dish Network and its Sling TV subsidiary being the most recognizable while small regional services GVTC Communications and Hotwire rounded out the list.

Full support for Single Sign-on will require apps to be updated to recognize the systemwide authentication, but the provider listings have offered a glimpse at which providers are currently on board with the feature.

As of this week, another major provider has joined the Single Sign-on program, with AT&T's DirecTV now appearing in the TV Provider list for authentication. The addition of DirectTV's 20 million U.S. subscribers makes it the biggest provider to support the feature so far, displacing Dish Network and Sling TV.

The addition of DirecTV isn't necessarily a surprise, as Apple had touted "DirecTV, Dish Network, and more" in its press release announcing the new TV app last month, but it's apparently taken DirecTV a few extra weeks to prepare. Still notably absent are the major U.S. cable companies such as Comcast and Charter/Time Warner, and there's no word on if or when those companies will be coming on board.

Apple has announced that the new TV app will become available to the public in December, indicating the company intends to release iOS 10.2 and tvOS 10.1 within that timeframe.

Apple tonight updated its website with a brand new page teasing a one-day Black Friday shopping event. Apple didn't offer Black Friday deals last year, opting to allow third-party retailers like Best Buy and Target to offer deals instead.

Friday can't come soon enough.

Our one-day shopping event will be here before you know it. Come back this Friday to check off everyone on your list.

Last year, Apple SVP of Retail Angela Ahrendts said the company was backing away from Black Friday promotions because "being good to your employees will always be good for your business."

On its Black Friday website, Apple says that its one-day shopping event will include free shipping on in-stock items ordered by 5 PM. You'll also be able to take part in the event with the Apple Store app and in-store. Those interested in visiting an Apple retail store on Black Friday will need to check their local Apple store's extended holiday hours because there will not be uniform opening and closing times.

Apple has also provided easy links to four holiday gift collections curated by the company, including "Apple gifts," "Music gifts," "Photography gifts" and "Games & Toys."

It's unclear what kind of Black Friday promotion the company will use this year. In the past, Apple has offered gift cards worth variable amounts with the purchase of Apple products. For instance, purchasing a Mac would yield a $100 gift card. However, in its European stores Apple has also opted for more traditional discounts.

Samsung plans to launch a glossy black version of its nine-month-old Galaxy S7 smartphone early next month, according to The Korea Herald.

The report claims the new color will help Samsung compete with the popular Jet Black and Matte Black variants of the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus. The new color could also fuel additional Galaxy S7 sales to help fill the void left by the permanently discontinued Galaxy Note 7 following battery safety concerns.

If the report proves accurate, it would not be the first time Samsung has followed in the footsteps of Apple in terms of smartphone colors. Earlier this year, it released a "pink gold" version of the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge after Apple launched the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus in Rose Gold last year.

Samsung's existing Black Onyx variant of the Galaxy S7 already has a somewhat glossy finish, so the new color would presumably be even slicker.

Apple has shared a new TV ad called "Frankie's Holiday" in time for the holiday season, accompanied with the tagline "open your heart to everyone."

Frankenstein's monster is portrayed by Everybody Loves Raymond star Brad Garrett, who stands 6'8" tall.

Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller has allegedly responded to an email from software developer Ben Slaney to further clarify why the new MacBook Pro maxes out at 16GB of RAM, noting that supporting 32GB of RAM would require a different logic board design which might reduce space for batteries.

Schiller: The MacBook Pro uses 16GB of very fast LPDDR memory, up to 2133MHz. To support 32GB of memory would require using DDR memory that is not low power and also require a different design of the logic board which might reduce space for batteries. Both factors would reduce battery life.

Slaney himself wrote an article explaining how the new MacBook Pro uses a low power, enhanced version of RAM called LPDDR3E, which maxes out at 16GB. To achieve up to 32GB RAM would have required using DDR4 RAM, but low-power LPDDR4 RAM is not supported by the Intel processors powering the late 2016 models.

Using the iStat Menus tool, Slaney determined that, under normal conditions, the LPDDR3E RAM uses 1.5 watts of power. In comparison, he said the notebooks would use about 3-5 watts if they were using DDR4 memory, although this estimate is rather loosely based on tests of DDR4 RAM on Windows-based notebooks.

Slaney said the 2-5 watts saved translates to 10% of overall power usage being dedicated to RAM versus 20-30% that would be required for DDR4 RAM, which, if accurate, helps justify Apple's power versus performance tradeoff.

Schiller previously addressed these power concerns in an earlier comment:

To put more than 16GB of fast RAM into a notebook design at this time would require a memory system that consumes much more power and wouldn't be efficient enough for a notebook. I hope you check out this new generation MacBook Pro, it really is an incredible system.

Apple's decision is even more justified when considering background power draw, or the energy a notebook uses to go back into sleep mode after regular usage. Slaney said this figure is estimated to be about 50% of overall power draw on an average system when using DDR4 RAM, but only 20% when using LPDDR3 RAM.

Moreover, the new MacBook Pro would get less than 7 days of standby time if it used DDR4 RAM, compared to 30 days with LPDDR3E RAM, he said.

Apple have been using LPDDR for several generations of their notebooks, and it’s part of the way that they get very long standby time on them. Switching to DDR4 would drastically decrease it from the 30 days of standby time that they get now to less than one week. With DDR4 they’d have produced a notebook that would have a completely drained battery if it was at 50% charge and you closed the lid and left it for a few days. Not only would that be annoying, but by running the battery flat often it would end up damaging a percentage of their batteries because they’d frequently get 100% discharged, which puts a lot of stress on them, and sometimes even kills them.

The rest of the article reflects upon poor battery life in several Windows-based notebooks with 32GB RAM, part of which can be blamed on the FAA's 100-watt-hour limit on notebook batteries brought on airplanes.

Full Article: "Why the MacBook Pro is limited to 16GB of RAM" on MacDaddy