Practically everyone reading this will have heard the reports about the lengths Apple will go to in order to ensure that its products are on the cutting edge of industrial design.

Well, to those reports you can add the one which suggests that Apple recently paid a total of $578 million — more than half a billion dollars — to GT Advanced Technologies to speed up “the development of its next generation, large capacity ASF furnaces to deliver low cost, high volume manufacturing of sapphire material.”

This move is designed to help keep down the costs of the Sapphire Glass screen rumored to be featured as part of the iPhone 6 — along with a redesign and bigger display.

Recent reports have claimed that Apple’s had some difficulties manufacturing the new iPad mini with Retina display, which is why it didn’t shout too loudly about its launch earlier this month, and why the device hasn’t been too easy to get hold of in many markets.

But now that the initial supply constraints are easing, the Cupertino company will produce 4 million units during November alone, according to supply chain sources in Taiwan.

As the holidays draw near, supplies of the iPhone 5s are finally starting to meet demand. When the smartphone first launched in September, it was nearly impossible to find any model in Apple stores and third-party retailers. As the weeks progressed, more and more models starting becoming available, while gold remained the most allusive.

Apple stores in the U.S. now have 90% of iPhone 5s models in stock, according to research from Piper Jaffray analyst and iTV rumormonger Gene Munster.

One of our favorite toys here at Cult of Mac is the the Lytro, a bizarre and radically cool digital camera that allows you to refocus your images after you snap them. The Lytro is fairly big — it’s about the size of a small flashlight — and the pictures it outputs are pathetically low-resolution by modern smartphone standards, but the promise is obvious: with the Lytro, you might never take a bad photo again.

The Lytro’s so incredible that before he died Steve Jobs reportedly wanted to put its light field technology into the iPhone. Today, Apple has patented a method of doing just that.

Who sells the most iPhones of them all? It’s not a carrier or a third party: it’s Apple itself. In fact, the Cupertino company sells 25% of all American iPhone sales, combined. Even more staggering, though, is that Apple sells one in ten smartphones, too.

Thanksgiving is almost here, which means its time for the sacred American tradition of Black Friday sales madness. Apple hates to hand out big discounts on its premium products, but even Cupertino can’t resist offering a few Black Friday sales, and its already starting to promote this years deal with a new promo page.

Apple has posted a teaser image on its Australian site for its upcoming sale on Friday, November 29th that promises free shipping to anyone who buys something from Apple.com on Friday.

Black Friday started as a major shopping day in the U.S. the day after Thanksgiving, but more international retailers have started to embrace the sales day as well. We’re still waiting to see what kind of modest deals Apple will offer, but if last year is any indication, don’t expect to be blown away. Here are the price cuts Apple had last year:

Apple has today begun selling the iPhone 5s unlocked and SIM-free to customers in the United States. Customers can stick in any GSM SIM card (so that’s one from AT&T or T-Mobile) when they receive the device and begin using it immediately with their existing plan — but they’ll have to wait 1-2 weeks for it to ship.

Apple has the exclusive license to liquidmetal, prompting all sorts of speculation that we would sooner or later see liquid metal iPhones, iPads and Macs. Despite this, so far, we’ve only seen Apple release one “product” using liquidmetal: the iPhone SIM ejector tool.

But Apple’s liquidmetal plans might be gearing up. The company has just filed five new patents, explaining the process by which it would use liquidmetal to build next-gen smartphones, tablets and digital displays.

What store sells the most iPhones every year? If you named, oh, the 5th Avenue Cube, or the Grand Central location, you’d be wrong, asserts ABC News. Instead, they identify an obscure Apple Store in a shopping mall in Delaware as being the likely contender for selling the most iPhones every year. What wizardry is this?

A lot of fuss has been made about the iPhone’s lack of repairability ever since it debuted in 2007 without *gasp* a removeable battery. Six years of design updates later and the iPhone is still as hard to tinker with as ever, unless of course you work at Apple.

Yesterday, Cult of Mac revealed a few pictures of the new tools Apple created to make iPhone 5s and 5c repairs easier than ever for Geniuses.  Now our tipster is back with a bunch of GIFs of Apple’s fancy new toys in action, straight from Apple’s official iPhone 5s and 5c repair training videos.

Along with detailed animations of the new iPhone 5s and 5c components, the exclusive shots below show the exact methods Apple staff use to repair broken iPhone 5s, thanks to an array of tools created to make the process more efficient, including a new Universal Display Removal Fixture and an iPhone Battery Fixture Apple keeps hidden in the back of Apple Stores.

Want to know how fix your iPhone the Apple way? Study the GIFs below and you’ll be swapping out batteries like a Genius in no time: