We close out another week with a variety of deals, starting with hardware. There are a number of more than two dozen unibody Mac Book Pros from the Apple Store, starting with a 2.26GHz MacBook Pro for just $929. We also have a new crop of price cuts from the iPad App Store, including “HTML Editor” for just $0.99. Finally, to get you in the holiday spirit is “Cut the Rope: Holiday Gift” from the App Store. This free iPhone or iPad app offers the popular game with holiday-inspired levels.

Along the way, we’ll also check out deals on iMacs, freebie iPhone Apps, an iPhone headset and a winter bundle of applications from MacUpdate. As always, details on these and many more items can be found at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.

Angry Birds Lite is the top downloaded free game on iTunes in 2010.

The pigs-vs-infuriated-fowls diversion beat out Tap Tap Revenge 3, PacMan Lite and Rockband in iTunes Rewind, which highlights the most popular games, music, apps and TV programs in the iTunes Store for 2010.

Angry Birds was also the second most popular free iPhone download overall, trailing Facebook but coming in ahead of Skype and The Weather Channel.

And it’s not just an addictive freebie, either: Rovio’s Angry Birds, the $0.99 version, is also one of the top grossing apps overall.

Its feathered fury is more popular than Call of Duty: Zombies, Tom Tom, Plants vs. Zombies, Tetris and Doodle Jump.

On the wings of this success, Rovio has just announced that they intend to launching Bad Piggy Bank, a new in-game payment system which will allow Angry Birds players to make in-app purchases without going through Apple.
Rovio’s goal is to divorce the game’s in-app purchase system from a reliance upon a credit card. Bad Piggy Bank, then, will launch in Finland (where Rovio is based) on Elisa, the country’s biggest telecom provider, and any in-app purchases will be added to their monthly bill, or even purchase other games, with other countries and telecoms to follow.

It will be interesting to see if this gets Rovio into trouble with kids making in-app purchases. Apple’s policy has been to allow kids’ games to have them, but generally refunds the money to parents if they complain about kids unwittingly buying stuff in apps.

Via iTunes

We’ve been remiss in officially marking the event, but make no mistake, it’s only because we’ve turned into gem-matching zombies. Let us remedy that now: Popcap’s Bejewled 3 is now available for download on the Mac. And it’s awesome.

Something new and unexpected happened to me today. I, like many others including other staffers at Cult of Mac, found ourselves unable to log into mobileme.com. If you attempt to log in the MobileMe log in screen is absolutely no help whatsoever. There is no error message. No warnings — you just cannot log in.

I found out why this was happening by accident. I was attempting to arrange for a tech support call with AppleCare using the Express Lane service that you can access at support.apple.com this morning.

I attempted to log in with my Apple ID only to discover that Apple had expired the password and that I needed to reset it. Surprise! I’m okay with that, but the fact that MobileMe didn’t tell me why I could not log on is typical of that service.  After all isn’t MobileMe generally rife with quality issues and just another hobby at Apple, Inc?

If you are in the same boat as the rest of us visit My Apple ID to reset your Apple ID password. I was able to log into mobileme.com after changing my password.

Update 12/10/2010 at 12:33 PM PST: According to some users via e-mail and other sources on the internet Apple has apparently rolled out new password rules starting with the fact that passwords for Apple IDs must be eight or more characters. Apple is also pushing users to use strong passwords that include a number and/or symbol. I don’t know about you folks, but all this is news to me and I’m a paying MobileMe member. I don’t recall receiving any notification from Apple about this. How completely lame is that? A simple warning or pop-up window on MobileMe’s website would have been enough to give me a heads up, but I got nothing. Just a mystery.

It might not be Santa’s Workshop, but Foxconn, Apple’s largest supplier, Friday said it now employs more than one million Chinese workers to build iPhones and iPads. The factory expects to have 1.3 million workers by the end of 2011.

The added workforce is designed to meet extra demand on the Taipei-based company, China’s largest private employer. Foxconn’s CEO told Bloomberg: “everybody is working hard.”

Though it can’t croon, the iPad is more popular as shaggy-coiffed teen idol Justin Bieber – at least in Google searches.

Google released results of its annual Zeitgeist findings, which capture key search trends, using Google’s Insights for Search and Google Trends data analytics tools.

Google’s top two fastest rising queries worldwide are both tech-related: Chatroulette and Apple’s newest product, the iPad.

Rounding out the top five are Justin Bieber, wardrobe challenged-popster Nicki Minaj and game site Friv.

The iPad and the iPhone were also the top two fastest rising searches in consumer electronics, trailed by Nokia 5530, HTC Evo 4G and Nokia rounding out the top five.

The Evo 4G was the only major Android phone to break into the top 10 global consumer electronics searches.

Via eweek, Google

Last month, Damon Alban of Gorillaz announced that he was in the midst of recording the band’s first album to be recorded entirely on the iPad… and now they say that they’ll be giving that album away for free as a Christmas gift to all their fans.

The next battle shaping up in smartphones may be between Microsoft and Google, with Apple sitting on the sidelines secure in its dominant position, one analyst told investors Friday. Indeed, a turf war is in the cards as Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 and Google’s Android fight for the hearts and minds of handset makers. HTC, Samsung, Motorola and LG will become the battleground as the two smartphone operating systems battle for the hardware companies’ attention.

“In the short run,” writes Needham’s Charlie Wolf, “the turf war could put the smartphone manufacturers in the driver’s seat. Ultimately, however, commoditization, accompanied by deteriorating prices and gross margins, appears inevitable for licensees of the Android and Windows Phone 7 operating systems,” Wolf says.

Everyone can agree that there’s simply no chance that when the iPad 2 ships next year that it won’t support FaceTime: the iPad’s the only current-gen iOS device that doesn’t support Apple’s video chat standard now, after all.

So sure, it can be taken for granted that the iPad 2 will handle FaceTime, but will it also allow for rear-facing photography? How else will it improve upon its predecessor?

There are few vintage computing clans who rival Cult of Mac members in zeal and tenacity, but fans of the Commodore Amiga come close.  The successor to the widely popular Commodore 64, the Amiga was a 16 bit multitasking computer that found great success in the gaming and video production markets.

Now the Computer-That-Never-Dies is coming to the OS of the future: iAmiga for iOS has been demoed and is (hopefully) coming soon to the App Store.

Whenever the Mac App Store launches, it’s not going to be as full-featured as the iOS equivalent. We already knew that the Mac App Store would launch without promo code support, but according to new information Apple has just sent to developers, it also won’t support Game Center or in-app payments at launch.

The storied Verizon iPhone remains as questionably and rumorous as a cryptozoological specimen: no matter how many times it is reported as a soon-to-be-imminent reality, it never quite seems to come about, no matter how assertive the Wall Street Journal or New York Times seem to be about the matter.

Still, even if it hasn’t come about yet, Apple’s clearly interested in the possibility of bringing the iPhone to Verizon when their exclusivity deal with AT&T ends, as evidenced by this most recent job posting looking to hire a new staff member who is experienced with Verizon’s CDMA network.

OBiON, a free mobile communications app for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch now available for download from the iTunes App store, is an exciting — if still evolving — tool that offers more power and flexibility than any similar app available today.

The app is the mobile centerpiece in a new communication paradigm being charted by Obihai Technology, a Cupertino, CA start-up founded by the developers of the first Analog Telephone Adapter, which made “Internet calling” possible without the use of a computer and spawned the growth of Vonage and dozens of other Internet Telephony Service Providers.

Now, in conjunction with the OBiTALK web portal and the company’s Obi110 Voice Services Bridge, OBiON users can leverage the ability to make and receive calls from local or remote landlines, as well as to and from multiple VoIP services on Apple mobile devices.

Nearly 20 years ago Snagit was introduced for Windows and it has quite a following. It has always been very successful as a Windows utility so it’s odd that it has taken so long to come to the Mac, but it is here finally and worth the wait.

The release version of Snagit for Mac OS X, a screen capture and image-editing utility, is now shipping after spending a year in beta. It’s a bit expensive at $49.95, but I think it is worth the money especially after years of using it in a corporate environment along with a slew of co-workers. Now I’ll have access to it on both platforms.

However, although Snagit on the Mac features the core feature set of the Windows version, that many know and love,  it doesn’t have all the features of the award-winning Snagit 10 for Windows. Perhaps that’s why the Windows version is included for free. The serial number you purchase works on both platforms.

With Christmas just around the corner, most of us are setting up our homes ready for the festive season. If you are looking to add some geekery to your festive decorations this year, MEA Mobile’s latest product, the iGlo iPhone controlled LED set could be just what you are after.

In its quarterly earnings call today, Costco announced that it has begun the process of “phasing out” Apple products by “mutual agreement.”

The falling out appears to have been caused by a variety of events that highlight fundamental incompatibilities between the two companies:

* Apple may have refused to offer the steep discounts to Costco that most other companies have. As a result, Apple products have never been super cheap at Costco.

* Apple has always refused to allow Costco to sell Apple products online.

* iLounge reported back in October that Apple “snubbed” Costco over iPad shipments, passing over the retailer and showering iPads on competitors like Target, Walmart and Sam’s Club.

It’s very likely that Costco will continue to sell Apple-compatible third-party accessories, however, including in stores and online.

Steven P. Jobs was recently named (again) the awesomest CEO on the planet, but is it possible he could also be cast in the Scrooge role this Holiday Season?

On a day when 26 year-old It Boy Mark Zuckerberg is making headlines for pledging (along with Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz) to join the likes of former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates in giving the majority of his personal wealth to charity, a New York Times news piece recounts the difficulty non-profit organizations have encountered raising funds through in-app donations using iOS mobile apps.

It all leads one to ask: what does the 2nd largest company in the world have against charitable giving?

Evolution is a wonderful thing (relax, creationists — we’re only talking the electronic kind here), and iPhone app Twitcal‘s transformation today into SnapCal brings big changes along with the name switch — not the least of which is that the cool little app is now free (down from $3) through iAd support.

For those who aren’t familiar with the app, SnapCal lets users broadcast event details through Twitter, which can then be easily imported into the app’s calendar by other SnapCal users. Events can also be auto-updated by following another user’s calendar. And now, the app can also import events from Evernote and sync with Google Calendar.

SnapCal can also be freed of its iAd shackles for a buck through an in-app purchase.

Although the service has already made a fairly impressive debut on the Mac, we’ve been waiting to see what gaming thin client OnLive had in store for iOS.

The potential for gamers is pretty great: imagine a graphically intensive PC game running at maximum graphical settings on your iPad or iPhone, thanks to Onlive’s fantastic streaming technology.

The only problem: how do you translate a PC or console game’s controls to a touchscreen without porting it over? Earlier in the year, Onlive demonstrated one solution and showed Gearbox’s fantastic shooter Borderlands being played on an iPad, but the controls looked pretty cumbersome.

It doesn’t look like Onlive’s come up with any better solution in the six months since that demo, though, because they still haven’t delivered a way to play their library of streamed games on iOS devices. Still, it looks like they are at least trying to raise awareness of their company on the App Store, because they’ve just announced that they have enabled game spectating on the iPad.

Sure, it’s better than nothing, but I really want to see a more aggressive move towards iOS on Onlive’s part at this point.

Incase just launched this iPhone 4 battery case called the Snap which it says can extend the juice on your mobile device by 40%.

It’s got a built-in 900 mAh battery, features hardshell construction with a soft-touch coating, a female 30-pin connector for charging and syncing, an LED power indicator and control button, an included 30-pin to USB cable and open access to all ports and controls.

For sure, the Snap gives a little less of that piggy-back-bulk than competitor Mophie Juice Pack Air – and costs about $30 less at $60 than the Juice Pack.

$60 for a charger case isn’t exactly lunch money, but probably worth the back up if you face long commutes or watch a lot of battery-sucking video on your iPhone 4.

Via Incase

The iPhone 4 is already one of the most luxurious phones you can own, but since everyone already has one, how can you, millionaire Joe Paleontologist, separate yourself from the rest of the hoi polloi?

How about an iPhone 4 forged of meteoric stone and a bloody, flesh-tearing cuspid ripped from the jaw bone of pre-history’s most fearsome thunderlizard?

Much to the annoyance of parents who have to pay the credit card bills, in-app iPhone and iPad buys are popular with kids.

A typical scenario: your tot is playing with a game like “The Smurfs’ Village.” It’s free to download will keep the kid busy building a village where they can play with the famous blue cartoon characters.

The problem? To complete the Smurf village, your kid might want to add an extra, say, a wheelbarrow of Smurfberries.

That in-app purchase comes with a price tag of $59.99. Other extras are slightly cheaper – a bucket of Smurfberries costs $4.99, two bushels go for $11.99.

Intel’s integrated graphic solutions are pretty lame even on Windows machines, but that makes them doubly so when running an operating system as GPU-intensive as Snow Leopard, which is exactly why Apple has embraced NVIDIA’s superior mobile chipsets.

Unfortunately, a lawsuit between Intel and NVIDIA complicated matters from Apple, and ultimately ended up resigning Apple’s current-gen laptops CPU obsolescence, but it was recently suggested that Intel and NVIDIA were soon to settle their differences, allowing Apple to update their MacBook line to more advanced Intel CPUs without having to sacrifice the integrated NVIDIA graphics architecture that helps keep even entry-level Macs running speedily along.

A new rumor, however, suggests the smaller MacBook line (13-inches) might be advanced through a different method: by ditching NVIDIA entirely.