MacRumors

Boy Genius Report posts a supposed leak of Apple's forthcoming Black Friday sale items. Among the discounted items are iMacs ($101 off), MacBook Pros ($51-$101 off), iPod nanos ($11 off), and iPod touches ($21-$41 off). Also included are the Apple TV, AirPort products, Magic Mouse, iWork, and several other Apple and third-party accessories.

Last week, Boy Genius Report posted a possible leak of a promo e-mail from Apple, although there were serious doubts about its authenticity. The latest claim, however, at least offers a reasonable set of discounts in line with Apple's previous Black Friday sales.

BBC reports that a third worm has been discovered that attacks certain jailbroken iPhones. The malicious software was discovered by security company F-Secure but appears to be isolated and specific to the Netherlands.

It is specifically targeting people in the Netherlands who are using their iPhones for internet banking with Dutch online bank ING. It redirects the bank's customers to a lookalike site with a log-in screen.

F-Secure estimates the number of affected phones to be only in the "hundreds" at this point, though it could theoretically spread. The worm appears to exploit the same users as the harmless Australian worm which displayed a photograph of popsinger Rick Astley. A second worm operating using the same mechanism was found just days later to be capable of accessing personal information. Only individuals who had specifically jailbroken their iPhones, installed SSH and not changed the default password seem to have the potential to be affected.

This particular worm, however, is potentially far more serious as according to F-Secure it also "enables the phone to be accessed or controlled remotely without the permission of its owner."

Update: Additional information from Intego reveals that the worm also steals personal data as well as opens the iPhone up to further access/control.

When active on an iPhone, the iBotnet worm changes the root password for the device, in order to prevent users from later changing that password themselves. It then connects to a server in Lithuania, from which it downloads new files and data, and to which it sends data recovered from the infected iPhone. The worm sends both network information about the iPhone and SMSs to the remote server. It is capable of downloading data, including executables that it uses to run and carry out its actions, as well as new files, providing botnet capabilities to infected devices

Update 2: The Loop reports that Apple has issued a brief statement regarding the latest threat:

"The worm affects only a very specific set of iPhone users who have jail broken their iPhones and hacked it with unauthorized software," Apple spokesperson, Natalie Harrison, told The Loop. "As we've said before, the vast majority of customers do not jailbreak their iPhones, and for good reason. These hacks not only violate the warranty, they will also cause the iPhone to become unstable and not work reliably."

Despite the massive success of the App Store, the actual app approval process has been a constant source of criticism for Apple. A couple of well known developers have recently quit from developing iPhone apps altogether due to the process. Businessweek recently interviewed Apple's senior vice-president of worldwide product marketing Phil Schiller who predictably defends the process:

"We've built a store for the most part that people can trust," he says. "You and your family and friends can download applications from the store, and for the most part they do what you'd expect, and they get onto your phone, and you get billed appropriately, and it all just works."

Schiller goes on break down the major types of rejections. He explains that 90% of rejections are due to technical errors or bugs while 10% of rejections are due to inappropriate or illegal content. Meanwhile <1% of app rejections fall into a legal gray area that require additional research before they can make a decision. One example of such an application was one that teaches you how to cheat at gambling in casinos (in this case, it was rejected). The source of frustration for developers have frequently come from inconsistent review standards and vague communications from Apple. Apple has been making some efforts to improve the transparency of the approval process, but obviously not enough yet to fully appease many developers.

As expected, Apple has announced that they will be holding a one day shopping event on Friday, November 27th. In the U.S., the day after Thanksgiving is called "Black Friday", which is historically one of the busiest shopping days of the year. MacRumors reader @chrisrooke let us know that Apple has begun emailing international customers this teaser page about the sale day.

Come back to the Apple Online Store this Friday for a special one-day-only shopping event.

Over the past several years, Apple has participated with one-day specials at both their retail Apple stores as well as the online Apple Store. Questionable rumors were spread last week suggesting that Apple would be offering substantial discounts on iPods and Macs this year, but Apple's Black Friday discounts have always been very modest. Previous year's price lists can be found in our guides page.

We had previously reported that magazine publisher Cond Nast is already taking steps to produce tablet-specific content for their publications in anticipation of the Apple Tablet (and competing devices). Cond Nast publishes the technology magazine Wired amongst others.

Conds plan, meanwhile, is to create digital versions of its magazines that will work on all the upcoming tablets, using new software from Adobe (ADBE). Those tablets arent actually on the market yet, but the publisher says its confident that well soon see multiple versions of machines featuring large color touchscreens and wireless connections.

The company claims it has no special knowledge about Apple's device, but there have been reports that the New York Times has already been approached about producing content for the device.

A new video demonstrates their vision for content delivered on a tablet device:

Again, the company claims not to have any specific knowledge of an Apple tablet device, but expectations are building for exactly such a device.

Following up on early benchmarking tests that showed Apple's new quad-core Core i5 and Core i7 iMacs boasting significant performance improvements compared to their Core 2 Duo-based counterparts, Macworld has utilized its own Speedmark suite of real-world tests and found similar results.

Speedmark is Macworld Lab's standard test tool for benchmarking new and upgraded systems running Mac OS X. It uses real-world applications and everyday tasks. It is a general-purpose suite that includes tasks everyone from a high-end user to a new user performs every day.

Macworld Lab follows a detailed script to perform the 17 tasks. Each task is performed three times. We compare the results to a 2.13GHz MacBook with 2GB RAM (Mid 2009), which is assigned a score of 100. We then take the geometric mean of the normalized scores.

Macworld's tests compared the new quad-core iMac models with the base-level Core 2 Duo-based 21.5" and 27" models, as well as the entry-level 2.66 GHz previous-generation 24" iMac, revealing the expected significant performance improvements. Macworld also compared the new models to Apple's latest entry-level quad-core and 8-core Mac Pro models, with both new quad-core iMacs even out-performing the Mac Pro in this real-world battery.

As Macworld notes, the new iMac is an attractive option for even professional users, comparing extremely favorably with the company's latest Mac Pro models.

With the new 2.66GHz Core i5 iMac and the 2.8GHz Core i7 iMac, Apple has not only blurred the line between consumer and professional systems, it's darn near erased it. The 2.66GHz Core i5 iMac offers faster performance at most tasks than the 2.66GHz Quad-Core Mac Pro. The Core i5 iMac also has more memory and more storage space than the 2.66GHz Quad-Core Mac Pro, while being $500 less (plus you get a 27-inch screen with the iMac). Unless you absolutely require additional PCI cards, multiple internal hard drives, or a lot of RAM, the Core i5 iMac makes a strong case for the being the go-to system for most Mac professionals.

Reuters reports that prominent iPhone game developer Gameloft is scaling back its efforts to produce content for the Android platform in the face of weaknesses of its application store. Gameloft also notes that it is not the only one making the move, with other game developers reportedly experiencing similar frustrations.

"We have significantly cut our investment in Android platform, just like ... many others," Gameloft finance director Alexandre de Rochefort said at an investor conference.

The company's frustration comes from a lack of success on the Android platform, contrasted with Apple's App Store ecosystem and its ability to drive sales for developers.

"It is not as neatly done as on the iPhone. Google has not been very good to entice customers to actually buy products. On Android nobody is making significant revenue," Rochefort said.

Games for iPhone generated 13 percent of Gameloft's revenue in the last quarter. "We are selling 400 times more games on iPhone than on Android," Rochefort said.

Several months ago, mobile app developer Larva Labs offered an analysis of the massive sales gap between the iPhone and Android platforms, noting a number of major deficiencies in Android's application store implementation. While Android developers have since moved to address some of those issues, the platform has yet to generate the buzz and critical mass to drive application sales to levels that make financial sense for software developers.

InsanelyMac reports that a member of its forums has created a workaround allowing users who have modified their Intel Atom-based netbooks into "Hackintoshes" in order to run Mac OS X to upgrade to OS X 10.6.2. The 10.6.2 update had specifically disabled native compatibility with those processors.

The changes Apple made to the latest mach_kernel removes support for this processor, leaving updated netbooks in a useless state. Fortunately, insanelymac user "teateam" patched the new kernel just two days after Apple rolled out the update. The original post can be found here. Many users are reporting success with this patch, so if your an Atom user looking to update to 10.6.2, give it a try, and let's not forget to give "teateam" a round of applause for saving all our hackintosh netbooks!

The reasons for Apple's disabling of Atom compatibility in 10.6.2 remains unknown, although some of speculated that the company is attempting to make it more difficult for users to create their own netbook Macs ahead of a possible tablet launch next year.

Google today held a preview event for Chrome OS, the company's forthcoming browser-based operating system scheduled to launch initially on netbooks in late 2010. Among the major announcements was that, like Google's Chrome browser, Chrome OS has been open-sourced as "Chromium OS" to allow any interested developers to contribute to developing the best possible operating system.

Today we are open-sourcing the project as Chromium OS. We are doing this early, a year before Google Chrome OS will be ready for users, because we are eager to engage with partners, the open source community and developers. As with the Google Chrome browser, development will be done in the open from this point on. This means the code is free, accessible to anyone and open for contributions. The Chromium OS project includes our current code base, user interface experiments and some initial designs for ongoing development. This is the initial sketch and we will color it in over the course of the next year.

Chrome OS is being positioned as a solution for users' secondary machines, offering a speedy, browser-based operating system consisting of Web apps and cloud-based data storage. The focus on speed begins at the top, with boot times currently clocking in at approximately 7 seconds.

Chrome OS will ship only on specific hardware from as-yet unnamed manufacturers with whom Google is partnering for development. As a cloud-based operating system, Chrome OS-based netbooks are planned to forgo traditional hard drives and instead utilize flash memory and remote cloud storage for their data handling needs. Pricing of Chrome OS-based netbooks is yet to be determined, but Google is anticipating that they will be in line with current netbook prices.

Google has also posted a promotional video highlighting the concept behind Chrome OS.

In a patent application filed in May 2008 and published today, Apple discloses that it has been researching methods to allow media devices such as the iPod to "push" their graphical user interfaces (GUIs) to accessory devices for the purposes of controlling the media devices remotely. In pursuing this technology, Apple notes that while remote control accessories for media devices are common, the interfaces are generated by the accessory itself, leading to incomplete functionality and varying experiences when multiple devices are used with a single accessory or a single device is used with multiple accessories.

But existing remote GUIs are defined and controlled by the remote control device, and consequently, they may bear little resemblance to a GUI supplied by the portable media device itself Certain functions available on the portable media device (such as browsing or searching a database, adjusting playback settings, etc.) may be unavailable or difficult to find. Thus, a user may not be able to perform desired functions. Further, GUIs provided for the same portable media device by different remote control devices might be quite different, and the user who connects a portable media device to different accessories with remote control may find the inconsistencies frustrating.

As a response to these issues, Apple proposes methods for media devices to "push" their own GUIs to accessory devices, allowing for full functionality and a consistent user experience across compatible devices and accessories.

The portable media device can provide the accessory with an image to be displayed on the video screen; the image can include various user interface elements that can resemble or replicate a "native" GUI provided directly on the portable media device. The accessory can send information to the portable media device indicative of a user action taken in response to the displayed image; such information can indicate, for example, that a particular button was pressed or that a particular portion of a touch-sensitive display screen was touched by the user. The portable media device can process this input to identify the action requested by the user and take the appropriate action. The action may include providing to the accessory an updated GUI image to be displayed, where the updated GUI image reflects the user action.

The lead inventor on the patent application is William Bull, former iPod User Interface manager at Apple and currently Senior Director of Mobile User Experience at Yahoo. Also among the inventors is former Apple executive Tony Fadell, the "father of the iPod".

The Associated Press reports that a judge has refused to grant AT&T's request for a temporary restraining order forcing Verizon to halt its commercials comparing the two companies' wireless network coverage.

AT&T filed the lawsuit in federal court in Atlanta earlier this month and asked for a temporary restraining order and a permanent injunction to stop the ads. It contends they are misleading and amount to deceptive trade practices.

Verizon argues that the commercials are valid and truthful.

A hearing has been scheduled for December 16th to allow the case to proceed.

Since publishing a public response to Verizon's commercials late last week, AT&T has now begun rolling out its own television ad, featuring actor Luke Wilson offering a comparison of AT&T's and Verizon's network using the same factors highlighted in last week's press release.