Apple has posted a teaser page for its annual Black Friday sale on its Australian online store. “The one-day Apple shopping event is Friday, 23 November,” reads the graphic. “We’ll help you make the most of the day, no matter how you shop.”

If you’re a longtime Apple customer, you know that the company’s Black Friday deals are infamously weak. The biggest kind of discount you’ll typically see is $40-$60 off an iPad or $100 off a Mac. Still, it’s the only time of the year that Apple discounts anything, so the deals are worth noting. Nothing specific has leaked out yet about the deals that will be happening this Friday, but expect some modest price cuts on all of the new products Apple introduced over the past few months.

Apple’s online and actual retail store deals should be the same. Don’t expect to stop by your local Apple store in the wee hours of the morning this Friday though, because the majority of stores won’t be opening at abnormally early hours.

Apple’s online shipping estimates for the iPhone 5 are finally starting to look more reasonable. Last week, orders placed through the Apple Store wouldn’t ship for 2-3 weeks, and now Apple is saying that new orders will arrive in 2 weeks time.

The continued decrease in time it takes to ship means that Apple is finally starting to catch up with demand. We may not see a more normal 1-3ish business day shipping estimate until after the holidays, but things are looking better.

At this point, the safest thing to do is reserve an iPhone 5 for pickup at your local Apple Store. Apple still notes that “iPhone 5 is available in limited quantities” on its website.

Via: iPhoneinCanada

Ah, the venerable old Macintosh Portable. First introduced in 1989, the $6,500 wasn’t just a milestone in that it was the first battery-powered portable Mac, but it was also the first laptop ever used to send an email in space.

I’ve always been fond of the cute, suitcase-y design of the Portable Macintosh, so I’m delighted to see that some industrious hacker has given it a new life by gutting it and transplanting the innards of a Toshiba NB100 netbook inside. Some truly advanced soldering later, and you have, for all appearances, a pristine Macintosh Portable that can also run OS X Mountain Lion.

Check out this full video tour…

The iPhone is a paragon of simple design. It packs a ton of complexity in a simple, easy to understand package. One example is the iconic Home button. One click of the iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad touch will wake your device, a click and hold will bring up Siri, and a triple click can enable a host of accessibility features.

Did you know, however, that you can set the speed at which the Home button will recognize your clicks? Added in iOS 6, this feature will be a boon to anyone with motor issue or even just those of us who want to slow down the speed at which we double or triple click that Home button.

Despite posting one of their most profitable quarters ever, Apple’s stock (AAPL) has taken a dive over the last two months. It’s been down nearly 25% from it’s recent highs and some analyst have said that the stock is great buy right now.

This morning, Brian White from Topeka claimed that the sell-off in Apple’s stock over the past weeks has been “insanely insane” given how Apple is poised to have a record breaking holiday quarter. Since making his claim, Apple’s price has jumped up 5% today.

Roger Dean is famous for his fantasy world artwork, which graced many a record sleeve and book cover during the 1970s and 80s. His work is iconic and instantly recognisable to a generation.

This app – Dragon’s Dream – is an unfortunate foray into iOS. It fails to do justice to Dean’s skill as an artist, and fails to offer iOS gamers an experience worth five dollars.

Every year Oprah Winfrey makes a list of her favorite things in life and then she gives everyone in her audience free copies of everything on her list. When you got a few billion to burn you can do that. One year Oprah said she just loooooved the iPad. Like, she said the iPad was the greatest thing ever, and middle-aged women across the country wept with joy. Now, she’s saying she’s totally off that and onto the next cool tablet – The Microsoft Surface.

Yesterday, Oprah tweeted: “Gotta say love that SURFACE! Have bought 12 already for Christmas gifts. #FavoriteThings” Thing is, Oprah tweeted about her love for the Surface from her iPad. So you know, I guess you can love an object that you never use. That’s cool. Well played Oprah.

Source: Twitter

A year after Steve Jobs’ passing, the yacht he had been working on with famed French designer Philippe Starck finally made it out to sea. Venus is a beautiful ship that conforms to all of Steve Jobs’ philosophies on minimalist design, and it reveals a lot about Steve Jobs’ design process. that took five years to build.

The entire project took five yeas to complete as Jobs and Starck perfected the design of the yacht millimeter by millimeter. In a recent interview, Philippe Starck explains what it was like to work on designing the yacht with Steve Jobs and what the design says about Jobs’ design process.

There have been a few rumors over the last week or two claiming that Apple’s new ultra-thin iMacs won’t be available in stores until 2013 due to production issues with the display and other components.

Rumors of the delay are probably false though, as a new report claims production is still on track for 2012, but initial supply will be fairly low.

With Mac OS X now in its ninth edition, one of the biggest hurdles Apple must overcome for its OS X 10.9 release is which cool cat it will be named after. We’ve had Cheetah, Puma, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard, Lion, and Mountain Lion so far. So what next?

Well, according to one rumor, it’ll be named OS X 10.9 Lynx. But we’re a little skeptical.

As everyone who has ever read J.R.R. Tolkein’s classic fantasy novel, The Hobbit, knows, Bilbo Baggins, Gandalf, Thorin Oakshield and a company of twelve other dwarves make their way from Bag’s End to the Lonely Mountan to battle Smaug on a journey by way of Rivendell, the Mirkwood and the Misty Mountains.

Here’s what the actual trip looked like. Thank goodness they didn’t trust iOS 6 Maps as their navigator, right?

Via: Bullz-Eye

AuthenTec, the mobile security solutions company that was acquired by Apple back in July, has sold off its part of its business. The devision that supplies embedded security solutions and encryption algorithms to the likes of LG, Motorola, Samsung, and Nokia has been acquired by NFC specialists Inside Secure for $48 million.

Right now, if Apple sticks with a yearly product release cycle, all of Cupertino’s major products are scheduled to debut next year in October. The iPhone 5S. The iPad mini 2. The iPad 5. New iPod Touch. New iMacs. New MacBooks. All released right before Christmas.

It’s hard to believe that Apple would actually release all of their new products in October next year, though. It not only makes for a boring road map, but it positions all of Apple’s new products during the most expensive holiday of the year: if people want to get, say, a new iPhone and an iPad next year, they might have to choose one or the other, instead of getting both at launch during a more staggered road map.

That’s why there’s something about the latest Digitimes report that makes sense to me: they say the iPhone 5S and next-gen iPad will come out in the middle of next year, or around June or July.

Lightning might be the connector of the future, and quite frankly it already seems absurd to me that I have to plug Apple’s huge old 30-pin dock connector into my little last-gen Nano just to charge it, but the oversized, hard-to-insert adapter will be hanging around for as long as people still have their perfectly good last-gen iDevices.

And Tylt’s Band Wall Charger looks to be a rather excellent charger for you luddites out there.

President Barack Obama has called Apple CEO Tim Cook alongside other Fortune 500 chiefs to discuss economic growth and the looming “fiscal cliff.”

Android users got a bit of a surprise over the weekend when they opened up Google Play to find a number of popular Apple apps had been ported to their devices. Apps like Garageband, iMovie, iPhoto, and the iWork productivity suite were all available to download for a brief period before they were pulled again.

Those who managed to purchase them before they disappeared, however, quickly found out that they were not the real thing. Surprise, surprise.

These paper notepads are ideal. No, seriously: They’re called iDeal Notepads, they come sized to match your iPad or your iPhone, and they’re designed to be strapped to their partner device with rubber bands.

Can you imagine being this poor Apple Store specialist, Mr. Sam Sung? The glowers of suspicion, the titters of ridicule he must have to endure? But he’ll show them. He’ll show them all as he conducts his job with ruthless efficiency, schooling Apple Store customer after Apple Store customer in his way of doing things. The Sam Sung Way.

Source: The Loop

How many of you still use the Mail app? Show of hands? Personally, I haven’t used it much since I migrated to Gmail, preferring instead the online interface and functionality (including tags) to a Mac-based solution. However, there are many folks who still use the email application that comes along with OS X and every new Macintosh computer.

If you’re one of those people, you know that the new version of Mail has a VIP mailbox, just like the one in iOS 6. On the Mac, this VIP mailbox shows all the email you’ve gotten from folks you’ve set as a VIP. If you don’t remember how to do that, see our tip on adding folks to the VIP list in OS X.

However, you might just want to show only VIP mail that’s in the Inbox, right? Not all of the VIP email you’ve gotten, ever. Here’s how.

An airport worker accused of being an accomplice in a recent robbery at JFK airport that resulted in over $1.5 million worth of iPad minis being stolen has been arrested.

Apple’s App Store first made its debut on the iPhone 3G back in July 2008, much to the delight of iPhone owners whose only taste of third-party software prior to that was with web apps. Now, just over four years on, it has received more than 1 million app submissions.

There’s a point at which a cover becomes the main attraction. Iron Man’s suit is clearly a suit. But Ripley’s Power Loader? I’d argue that it’s a mini crane with a clever, human-shaped cockpit. And so it is with the ORA, which claims to be an iPad case but is in fact a miniature theater. A miniature theater into which the iPad can be clipped.

AC/DC is one of the highest-grossing bands of all time, but until today, you would have struggled to find their music in digital form via any legal means. Why? They were one of the last great iTunes holdout bands, refusing to sell their music online in order to preserve the hallowed “album” format. Looks like they finally realized the battle’s lost, though. Now the Australian hard rockers have finally released their entire back catalog to the iTunes Store.

The latest Cult of Mac Deals offer is natural fit for your audio needs – on more ways than one.

The Clarity Series CW31 In-Ear Wooden Heaphones are truly the “natural” way to listen. These eco-friendly headphones feature rich, natural sound with housing to match. The best of premium technology and long-lasting natural elements…and they can be yours for just $24 for a limited time.

Everybody loves the Woz.

And what’s not to love? Steve Wozniak is a one-of-a-kind genius who invented the personal computer. He’s a millionaire who spends his money having fun, rather than trying to control the world. He’s a practical joker. He’s an iconoclast. And he’s a nerd’s nerd and a geek’s geek who believes in technology and the power of change.

But even the biggest Woz fan has to admit: The man loves the spotlight.

And the main way he grabs it is by saying what nobody expects him to say.