Australian police are after an organized gang they believe is behind 80 Mac thefts from schools.

Nearly 80 Apple computers (laptops and desktops) have been ripped off  from 15 schools in the state of South Australia this year,  along with a number of screen projectors for a total loot count police place at about $90,000 ($100,000 AUD).

Thieves wore gloves to eliminate fingerprints and knew exactly how much time they had to get in and out — in one case only swiping half of the MacBooks available. The thefts took place at suburban schools, in one case a Christian K-12.

“At times there are individual computers taken but they’re more opportunistic thefts,” Chief-Inspector Dennis Lock told local papers. “The short time it took for the thieves to steal the computers before security arrived indicates this was a more planned, organized and coordinated attack.”

Do you know a lucky Mac cultist who will get Apple’s fastest and largest iMac under the tree this year? Before you wrap one of the new 27-inch iMacs with Intel’s Core i7 processor, you might want to test the machine. A number of customers of the quad-core custom-built iMacs are reporting damaged screens or computers that show up dead on arrival.

Owners on Apple’s support discussion boards report Core i7 iMacs arriving either with a crack in the bottom left corner of the computer’s screen or the desktop computer won’t boot. Some customers report a two-week waiting period for a replacement.

George Dearing‘s three-year-old son got his hands on dad’s iPhone and – oops – found himself staring at the App Store. While it was still logged in to dad’s iTunes account.

Ommwriter is different. It’s a text editor, perhaps better described as a “writing environment” because text editor makes it sound like something you could write code in. And I can’t see many people using it for that.

Ommwriter plays ambient music and soundscapes while you work. The splash screen encourages you to stick headphones on while you’re using it; the idea is to put you in that special writing space you need to be in to get your work done.

It’s not just HDTVs that are on sale this Black Friday. Lots of iPhone developers are dropping prices for the holidays also.

App Cubby, for example, maker of the popular Gas Cubby app for tracking gas mileage, is dropping the cost of its apps by 30 percent through the Thanksgiving holiday. Several other developers have also temporarily dropped prices, including DOOM Resurrection and BeejiveIM.

A good way to track apps on sale is to check App Shopper’s “prices” view. There’s a lot of crap, but to spot the good stuff, keep an eye on an app’s icon. A good icon generally means a good app. A good icon

Here are some links for apps on sale:

• Gas Cubby — iTunes — AppShopper
• Trip Cubby — iTunes — AppShopper
• Health Cubby — iTunes — AppShopper
• DOOM Resurrection $2.99 — iTunes — AppShopper
• BeejiveIM $6.99 — iTunes — AppShopper
• Tipulator $0.99 — iTunes — AppShopper
• Mathemagics: Mental Math Tricks $0.99 — iTunes — AppShopper

Please let us know if you see other good ones we should highlight.

The season finale of Larry David’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm” reunites the Seinfeld cast. Larry is watching an episode of Seinfeld set in 2009. George is an iPhone developer who made a fortune with “iToilet,” a GPS app that tells you the location of the nearest public restroom. Unfortunately, George lost it all by investing with Bernie Madoff.

Via The Raw Feed.

Big-screen monitors with built-in HDTV tuners are a great way to upgrade your screen — you get a monitor and a high-def TV thrown in.

Dell Small Business offers the Viewsonic 24″ 1080p Widescreen LCD HD Television, model no. VT2430, for $249.99 with free shipping. That’s tied with our mention from last week and the lowest total price we could find by $20. Sales tax is added where applicable. Features include a 1920×1080 (1080p) resolution, 1,000:1 contrast ratio, 5ms response time, 300 cd/m² brightness, built-in speakers, one HDMI input, and VGA, component, and other video inputs.

We start the week out with a trio of items designed for Black Friday followers, App Store browsers and big screen fans. First up, Apple confirms it will have a Black Friday “event,” but provides no details. Last week, a blog posted what it thought was a leaked Apple Store Online flyer, mentioning 25 percent and 30 percent discounts. The “leak” was later discounted, itself. Next up: for all those iPhones and iPod touches that will likely be purchased over the holidays, Apple’s App Store has unveiled a new batch of free applications. Finally, the U.S. Thanksgiving and Christmas begs for widescreen TVs dripping in all their HDTV glory. We have several to pick from.

As always, for details on these and other bargains, check out CoM’s “Daily Deals” page.

If you’ve ever stared at a painting and wanted to reach out and squeeze that adorable little putto, you’ll soon have a chance to do it without getting arrested.

Florence’s Uffizi Gallery, one of the largest treasure troves of Renaissance art, is developing a touch-screen device that allows art lovers to zoom in and take a closer look at the masterpieces.

You can flip through centuries of art — the same way you scroll through your albums on iTunes.

The program is called “Uffizi in a Touch” (sadly, a name not vetted by anyone who actually speaks English) developed by an Italian company called Centrica.

It took them four years to take life-size 100-megapixel photos that will be up for perusal in December for researchers and the more tactile groups of tourists.

No word yet on whether Apple will be after them for using the Cover Flow technology that’s been on the Cupertino company’s devices since 2006.

If an iPhone with Ocarina makes sweet music, how about three iPhones?
That may be the thinking behind a trio of iPhones (the third is peeking out from under the back — for some thumb action, maybe?) mounted to a laser-cut body found at the Maker meet-up in Japan.

No reports on what comes out when you blow into the mouthpiece, but the idea is sounds good, though perhaps not good enough to justify the three-device cost.

Via Make

AT&T will lose its exclusive hold on the iPhone in June 2010, analyst Brian Marshall said recently. In a television interview, the AmTech analyst also said Apple will receive $300 per iPhone AT&T and other carriers sell, down from the current $450 subsidy from the U.S. carrier.

Talking to Bloomberg TV, Marshall said iPhone owners, who comprise just 4 percent of AT&T subscribers, use 40 percent of network bandwidth.

The phrase “putting a genie into the bottle” comes to mind as reports surfaced Monday of a malicious offspring of a prank aimed at owners of unsecure jailbroken iPhones. Dubbed the “Duh” worm, the latest security threat targets the financial data of customers using online bank ING Direct.

The worm redirects ING Direct users to a phishing site. Those phones also come under the control of a botnet in Lithuania, reports said. The attack searches for iPhones that use the default secure shell (SSH) root password of “alpine.” The jailbreaking process often requires a person to install SSH, but many fail to change the default – opening the door wide for malicious hacks.

Update: A new Apple Store Black Friday “ad” leaked again to Boy Genius Report – this time from what the site described as a “pretty credible” source bearing “more reasonable” sale prices. Among the items, iMacs and MacBook Pros starting at $1098, iPod nanos for $138 and iPod touch for $178. Apple TV reportedly going for $208, Airport Express for $88 and the Magic Mouse and wireless keyboard for $64 each.

Apple today unveiled a teaser ad on its U.S. and UK online stores, offering no details on what bargains could be available for Mac fans. The official announcement comes just days after a purported flyer (later shot down) indicating up to a 30 percent discount on items.

“Come back to the Apple Online Store this Friday for a special one-day-only shopping event,” the ad urges. “You’ll find lots of iPod, iPhone and Mac gift ideas – all with free shipping.” Unlike the UK, where the upcoming holiday is not commonly observed, the U.S. online store mentions “the day after Thanksgiving.”

BusinessWeek ran late yesterday an interesting article interviewing Phil Schiller about the App Store. While it’s good to see Schiller again talking publicly about the approvals process, it’s sad to see Apple still ignoring key issues.

Rumors about Apple’s still-unannounced but wildly anticipated tablet are flying like crazy at the moment, in a fashion not unfamiliar to the last few months before we finally got to see the iPhone. And, as Ed told you last week, content providers are making pronouncements about getting their stuff on the device, believed to be optimized for reading newspaper and magazines.

Conde-Nast and our old friends at Wired, in particular, are announcing that they’ll be on the Apple Tablet and have already developed a special multi-touch magazine format just dying to be present at launch. They’re so confident about this, in fact, that the holidays-only Wired Store in Manhattan features a concept mock-up of the tablet and its interface, which you can watch in the above video.

Some things to note:

1. The design concept is…a big iPhone, more or less.
2. The interface actually looks quite nice, and I could imagine reading it.
3. There is no way that anyone at Conde has handled an Apple Tablet. They couldn’t possibly be this publicity-seeking or bold about their pronouncements if they had been brought behind the Steve curtain.
4. Also, the fact that Wired worked with Adobe to create the new format is a clear sign that they’ve had no contact with Apple. Anything based on AIR or Flash is unlikely to be compatible with the Tablet, for all the reasons there is no Flash or AIR on the iPhone

Other than that, this is really fun to watch.

Video Demonstrates Wired‘s iTablet App [Wired]

Until I tried Neuhaus Laboratories’ T-2 vacuum tube amp, I thought I had a pretty good speaker system hooked to my Mac. It was a three-piece ensemble with a pair of nice satellites and a honking big subwoofer. It pumped out 200-watts and I thought it sounded great.

But then I hooked up the T-2 Amplifier, and it’s literally night and day. I know this sounds like an old cliche — but it’s true. Even a half-deaf old punk like me (too many ear-piercing concerts) can hear the difference. It’s striking — and it’s absolutely glorious.

Maybe you’re a budding musician working at a nightclub and don’t know what to do with all the misplaced iPhones left behind. Or maybe you’re just brilliant and a wee bit inebriated.

Either way, we figure this is how you might be spending your time (uh, just don’t forget to activate “Airplane Mode” on ALL the phones). And unlike other hey,-watch-me-turn-a-phone-into-a-musical-instrument performances, this one doesn’t seem quite so much like a peek into Bizarro World.

Next up: Chef Ramsey hosts a Hell’s Kitchen episode where the only cooking utensils are iPhones.

“You know, if you saute scallops on a non-stick iPhone screen, they won’t stick. That’s why it’s called fucking non-stiiiiiiiick!”

Cover Up is a new $0.99 iPhone app that masks embarrassing bathroom noises with other bathroom sounds, like running water, a hand dryer or blow dryer.

Trying to mask the sound of a giant anal raspberry is like spraying deodorant to mask a pooey smell: it never really works. But it may be useful if you’re known to the person in the next stall.

More info at Coverup.me.

There’s nothing better than gazing up at the stars on a night out. For $3, Pocket Universe: Virtual Sky Astronomy, using sorta-augmented reality, lets the astronomically impaired among us impress our dates.

We close out the week and prepare for the long flights, long waits and long lines as Thanksgiving rears its head. To get you ready (maybe even point out a stocking-stuffer or two), we offer our top trio of deals. First up, nothing beats a good set of in-ear “headphones.” This deal features ‘phones from Apple that slice $6 from other offers. Next up: more and more of us take the office wherever we travel. To make work-at-home easier, there is a $50 deal on Apple’s iWork ’09 suite of applications. To relax, there is always the iPhone or iPod touch – and what are they without some apps. Apple has unveiled another batch of apps that’ll cost you nada – the perfect price as you compare this year’s shopping list with your always shrinking budget.

For details on these bargains and more (like a Samsung Luxia HDTV), check out CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.

It’s not an easy time for Microsoft — with Steve Ballmer having to field questions about being “buffoons” and an “evil empire”  at the shareholder’s meeting (.doc) — so when they get together “the world’s most influential technology pundits and online writers” (nb: we weren’t invited) for Mobius to discuss super-secret mobile tech you’d think they’d have a more sympathetic crowd.

If this pic posted by Jason Dunn over at Windows Phone Talk is any indication, most journalists, even the best and brightest from sites like Engadget and Slash Gear are Macs, at a non-scientific ratio of five to three.

Sorry guys. It looks like we’re mostly interested in covering you, not using you.

In a sign of the iPhone’s power to attract, China Unicom Friday said it expects to have 10 percent of the nation’s 3G users by 2012. The comments by an unnamed executive of the country’s second-largest wireless carrier to China Daily echo those made publicly earlier this week.

China Unicom Chairman Chang Xiaobing told reporters recently he expects the iPhone will be the best-selling smartphone in the country. China Unicom sales of iPhones coincided with the introduction of the carrier’s 3G network. Although much was made of China Unicom adding only 5,000 when the iPhone launched in late October, the carrier said the iconic smartphone boosted 3G subscribers to over 1 million in just one month.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer fielded heated questions from the software giant’s shareholders Thursday concerned about losing younger consumers to Apple. Responding to a question on how best to market to the “next generation” of computer users, Ballmer remarked that there “is a group of people with whom our market share is less.”

Although Apple CEO Steve Jobs was recently voted the “most admired entrepreneur” among the 12 to 17 year-old age group, Ballmer told the audience “it is important to remember that 96 times out of 100 worldwide, people choose a PC with Windows – that’s a good thing,” according to Seattle, Wash.-based TechFlash.

In “The Proposal,” Sandra Bullock plays a Canadian-born, bulletproof book editor who finds herself stuck in Sitka, Alaska while waiting to marry her assistant to get a green card.

After her cell phone gets stolen by an eagle, she picks up a replacement at the town general store — what could be more Alaska? — and then goes to the only Internet cafe around.

And has to answer all of her 37 urgent messages with a handful of dimes on a coin-operated modem system — via a iMac G3.  This in stark contrast to the late-model iMac she had in her New York fiefdom.

It was one of the only bits in the movie that made me smile. I kind of wish I hadn’t sold mine, old as it was…

Hackers have bypassed Apple’s desire to remove support for Intel’s Atom processor from Mac OS X 10.6.2, allowing the increasingly popular netbooks to run Cupertino’s latest operating system. The complicated hack replaces the Mac OS X kernal, according to reports.

The low-powered Atom processor from Intel is often used by low-cost netbooks. Apple currently offers no hardware officially supporting the Atom chip.