MacRumors

MacMall has announced their Black Friday sale which will runs from now until midnight P.T. on Friday, November 28th. Last year's MacMall sale delivered some of the largest discounts available online. This year, however, MacMall faces stiff competition from BestBuy who is offering a number of $100-$150 instant discounts on Macs. This compares favorably to MacMall which tends to combine both instant discounts and rebates.

As usual, it can be difficult to sort through the full list of discounts which confusingly intermix both old and current inventory.

This summary chart, however, lists the discounts on current Macs from both retailers with the "best" deal highlighted and product linked in bold.

For those willing to buy previous-generation Macs, discounts can be significant compared to their original retail prices (example, $1149 for original MacBook Air), but requires a bit more research to balance the cost saving vs. buying older technology.

Apple may offer some slight discounts on products for their own Black Friday sale, though historically these have only been up to $100 on a few select models.

* Combines instant + mail-in rebates.
MacMall and BestBuy are site affiliate partners and sales benefit MacRumors financially

Update: Amazon prices added.

Update 2: BestBuy's sale over.

Apple has issued a new QuickTime update for the new MacBook, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air which come equipped with the mini DisplayPort. The update addresses the issue of standard definition playback through the DisplayPort:

This update is recommended for owners of MacBook, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro with Mini DisplayPort. The update addresses an issue where some standard definition purchases from the iTunes Store do not play on some external displays.

Based on early testing by MacRumors reader Ampidire, this update appears to allow standard definition (SD) content to play unhindered over the mini DisplayPort.

Just last week, it was revealed that Apple's new mini DisplayPort enforces HDCP protection. This prevents the playback of HDCP flagged content over non-secure video output. In the example given, one customer was unable to play back an SD iTunes movie over a mini DisplayPort <-> VGA connector. Several readers objected to this restriction as iTunes movies downloaded to your computer are only offered in standard definition, while the HDCP protection was intended to prevent digital copying of high definition content.

This latest update appears to remove the HDCP enforcement on standard definition content, which means that current movie content purchased or rented on a Mac should playback unrestricted. While Apple does offer high definition movies for rental through Apple TV, it's not clear when Apple will begin offering this to Mac users.

ifoAppleStore claims that Apple retail employees have the authority to match prices of other authorized retailers.

Apple has apparently fired the first shot in the holiday shopping battle, by announcing internally that retail store employees have the authority to match the prices of other authorized retailers.

Based on the site's comments, there is some debate about whether this is a new ability. Regardless, the issue is typically moot as retailers generally only offer Apple's products at the recommended retail price. The notable exception to this, however, has been sales surrounding Black Friday in which retailers offer instant discounts on Apple products.

BestBuy is already offering discounts up to $150 off on current Macs. If this policy is true, then similar discounts may be achievable at Apple's own retail stores. Apple's own Black Friday sales will be revealed on Friday, and other retailers such as Amazon and MacMall have offered both instant and mail-in rebates in the past.

iPhone app developers appear to be getting in on Black Friday discounts with numerous app sales tracked on AppShopper.com. Notable titles on sale include Spore Origins and Tetris, both 40% off.

Several readers have noticed that music from different studios have started appearing in iTunes with a DRM free option. This would seem to confirm rumors that Apple is in late stage negotiations with studios about launching more DRM free music.

Forum user Doodledoo has been following it closely and found evidence of tracks from both Warner and Sony studios participating in iTunes Plus. Apple originally launched their DRM-Free iTunes Plus format with the support of only EMI but recent rumors have suggested Apple is working on winning over the other three majors studios (Warner, Sony, Universal).

Finally, the long rumored Beatles launch on iTunes may be a bit further off (if anyone still cares). Paul McCartney recently said that iTunes negotiations had stalled:

"The last word I got back was it's stalled at the whole moment, the whole process I really hope it will happen because I think it should."

The Beatles/Apple Corps and Apple have had a long-running feud over usage of the name "Apple". This disagreement was finally settled in 2007 in which Apple, Inc. now owns all the trademarks related to "Apple".

Apple has set up a new page promoting their MacBooks as the "world's greenest family of notebooks."

When we redesigned the new Macbook, our designers and engineers set a goal of making not only the greenest notebook Apple ever produced, but the greenest family of notebooks. So every new Macbook has been built using materials that are highly recyclable and free of many harmful substances present in other computers.

Apple claims that they have worked hard to eliminate many toxins, including mercury and arsenic, and the unibody enclosure is promoted as desirable to recyclers. Other benefits include reduced packaging and more energy efficiency. Apple has also posted a new television advertisement promoting this campaign.

The ad began airing tonight. Apple has been criticized in the past by some over environmental concerns. Apple has been posting regular updates about their progress with respect to the environmental impact of their products.

Apple NZ has started emailing customers about their Black Friday event for one day only on November 28th.

Come back to the Apple Online Store this Friday for a special one-day-only Christmas shopping event. Youll find dozens of great iPod, iPhone and Mac gift ideas all with free delivery.

It's been widely expected that Apple would be offering a day-after-Thanksgiving sale. Previous year sales have offered modest discounts on select Apple gear. More substantial discounts may be found at 3rd party retailers. MacRumors will report on these and other substantial Apple deals on Friday.

Several readers have noticed that our Buyer's Guide has recently changed the iPhone recommendation to "Don't Buy - Updates Soon" despite no recent rumors about a new iPhone update.

The Buyer's Guide generates some of its recommendations automatically based on historic product life cycles. For a product like the iPhone, however, which has only been on the market for a short period of time, these product cycles can be less predictive.

The relatively short product cycles for the iPhone reflect the fact that Apple has made regular adjustments to the iPhone's price and storage capacity. Only 2 months after its initial release in 2007, Apple dropped the price of the 8GB iPhone down $200. Then in February, Apple boosted the maximum storage capacity of the iPhone from 8GB to 16GB.

These regular short updates are why the Buyer's Guide recommendation has changed, but Apple has said they are not going to be updating any more products in 2008. So, any new updates wouldn't realistically be seen until early 2009. And Apple has said that they will continue to improve and aggressively price the iPhone in the future.

Regardless, readers should probably wait until Friday before buying any new Apple hardware since Apple and other retailers will be offering Black Friday After Thanksgiving sales. BestBuy, PowerMax and Amazon are already advertising their Black Friday sales, and we believe that both Apple and MacMall will also be offering their traditional discounts on Friday. Last year's discounts were as high as $300 off high end MacBook Pros.

Mobile developer Handheld Games Corp reported to TouchArcade.com that performance of their 3D TouchSports Tennis game [App Store, $4.99] is noticeably different between models of iPhones and iPod touches. Their 3D tennis game (video) seems to particularly challenge the 3D hardware on the iPhone and iPod touch. As a result, they had to implement specific optimizations to run consistently on every device.

In part, the differences stem from the fact that the 2nd Generation iPod Touch had its processor quietly boosted to 532MHz. Meanwhile, the iPhone 3G, Original iPhone and 1st Generation iPod Touch run at 412MHz. However, the differences must extend beyond this simple change, as there seem to be substantial performance differences between the similarly-clocked models as well.

From Handheld Games Corp's experience, the 2nd Generation iPod touch is the fastest model "by far", followed by the iPhone 3G, iPhone and finally the 1st Generation iPod touch lagging behind (at least with respect to 3D gaming). Due to these differences, Handheld Games Corp's CEO does not recommend anyone interested in gaming to even consider buying a used 1st Generation iPod touch.

Surprisingly, Apple has released the iPhone 2.2 firmware tonight shortly after midnight. The latest update is available in iTunes for existing iPhone and iPod touch owners. The update contains:

Enhancements to Maps
- Google Street View
- public transit and walking diretions
- display address of dropped pins
- share location via email
Enhancements to Mail
- resolved isolated issues with scheduled fetching of email
- improved formatting of wide HTML email
Improved stability and performance of Safari
Podcasts are now available for download in iTunes application (over Wi-Fi and cellular)
Decrease in call set-up failures and call drops
Improved sound quality of visual voicemail messages
Pressing the Home button from any Home screen takes you to the first Home screen
Preferences to turn on/off auto-correction in Keyboard settings

The update appears to deliver all of the expected features that we have detailed over the past several weeks. Other new findings include:

- App Store links in Mobile Safari correctly link directly to the App Store.
- Street view does not appear to be in the iPod Touch
- Tech note on downloading Podcasts in iPhone 2.2
- Netshare still works according to one user
- Emoji troubleshooting and Emoji technote for Japanese customers.
- Security changes found in 2.2.
- Transit directions screenshot
- How to invoke Street View on the iPhone

Update: List of new and undocumented 2.2 features

Apple has released an update to iTunes to version 8.0.2. The update is available in your Mac OS X software update.

iTunes 8.0.2 improves stability and performance and provides a number of important bug fixes, including:

- Addresses a quality issue creating MP3s on some computers.
- Fixes a connectivity issue with the iTunes Store when using some Internet proxies with Mac OS X.
- Improves accessibility with VoiceOver.

The update comes just one day ahead of the rumored release of iPhone Firmware 2.2.

MacWorld Sweden caught the attention of iPhone users when they reported that Swedish carrier Telia is planning on bringing Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) to their iPhone users. MMS is a feature that has been long requested by iPhone users and would allow the easy sending of multimedia (photos, video) to your contacts.

Their solution appears that it may be a third party application developed by Swedish developer Mobispine. Mobispine is marketing their MMS application to mobile carriers (such as AT&T) as a solution to provide the service to their end users.

We're confident that operators will find the service easy to use and profitable with an opportunity to expand messaging usage, improve subscriber retention and hopefully increase revenue. The service will also increase customer loyalty and recognition as the brand is displayed on the user's phone. The application is white-labelled and will be branded for each operator and distributed via the App store.

While there have been many MMS-like applications that have appeared in the App Store, this solution appears like it would tie in directly with the carrier, allowing more seamless messaging between mobile phones. Of course, this would also mean that carriers would likely be able to charge a premium for MMS messages.

Mobispine describes their app:

MMS on iPhone enables easy, convenient and cost-effective communication with colleagues, friends and family. Users can easily create a new MMS and attach a picture from an album on the phone or simply take a new snapshot with the camera. The application is integrated with the iPhone's contacts for easy access. Some of the key features for end-users include the ability to easily send and receive messages from iPhone to any phone with a native and intuitive user interface. The application also offers the ability to capture a picture via the iPhone camera or the option to select from existing photos.

Apple will still have to approve the application for inclusion in the App Store, but with the mobile carrier's blessing, it seems likely this app would see approval.

TechRadar.com reports on some preliminary benchmarks on Intel's upcoming Nehalem EP chips which they say will be sold as the Xeon X5560 CPUs in the 1st quarter of 2009. Apple has traditionally used the Xeon processors for the Mac Pro line.

Based on their early benchmarks of dual-processor configurations, TechRadar found that the new Nehalem Xeons at 2.8GHz scored favorably in SPECfp benchmark with a score of 160 as compared to a score of 90 for Intel's current Penryn-based Xeons running at 3.4GHz.

And remember, Nehalem EP's 160 point score is for a pre-production system running at 2.8GHz. Models humming a 3.2GHz tune will be available when the chip launches early next year

The current Mac Pro uses the Xeon ("Harpertown") 5400 series processors in dual-processor configurations. It has been speculated that Apple will be migrating the Mac Pro to these Nehalem Xeon processors which are due in the first quarter of 2009.

German publication Spiegel.de reports an newly announced iPhone vulnerability that can force a (potentially expensive) phone call to be made simply by visiting a webpage in Safari. The vulnerability was to be announced in ComputerBild on Monday but was detailed today in a press release from the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology (SIT). A video of the exploit is also available.

SIT reports that they notified Apple of the issue a month ago and that a fix will become available on November 21st through a firmware upgrade.

This seems to confirm an earlier report that we would see iPhone Firmware 2.2 released on that date. The iPhone 2.2 firmware contains a number of small new features we have previously detailed.

Earlier this week, IBM announced its plans to buy Transitive, a small cross-platform virtualization company.

MacRumors readers will remember the company for providing the technology behind Rosetta, Apple's PowerPC emulator for Mac OS X. Rosetta played a major role in allowing Apple to transition from PowerPC to Intel architectures and remains a part of Mac OS X. Apple's need for Rosetta, of course, has lessened over the years as the switch to Intel has progressed.

It's not clear if this will affect Apple's ongoing license for Transitive technologies.