AT&T has dismissed Fake Steve’s Operation Chokehold protest as an attention-getting stunt.

Fake Steve is calling on disgruntled AT&T customers to bring AT&T’s data network “to its knees” at 12 noon PST this Friday, December 18.

The action is in protest of comments made by a company executive that some iPhone users are using too much data. The protest started as a joke, but seems to have taking on a life of its own. Judging by comments on forums, Facebook and Twitter, people are planning to take part.

Contacted by CultofMac.com, an AT&T spokesman said:

We understand that fakesteve.net is primarily a satirical forum, but there is nothing amusing about advocating that customers attempt to deliberately degrade service on a network that provides critical communications services for more than 80 million customers. We know that the vast majority of customers will see this action for what it is: an irresponsible and pointless scheme to draw attention to a blog.

The AT&T spokesman doubted the action — if it goes ahead — will have much effect. There’s only about 300 participants committed to take part, according to a Facebook fan page set up for the event. The spokesman also claims that many have criticized the event: several have pointed out that the action may affect emergency calls.

Protesters plan to disrupt AT&T’s data network in several ways:

• Turning off WiFi
• Streaming YouTube videos
• Streaming live video with the new UStream Live Broadcaster app (iTunes link)
• Streaming high-bandwidth video from Akamai’s iPhone Showcase site

It’s unclear whether disruption of AT&T’s data network will affect voice calls.

With 10 shopping days left before Christmas, we have a bonanza of Apple hardware bargains, ranging from MacBook Pros to iPod nanos. We start off with the Apple Store, offering more than a dozen refurbished MacBook Pro laptops, including a 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo machine with 13.3-inch display for $1,299. A slightly slower (2.26GHz) C2D MacBook Pro from Expercom is bundled with 4GB of RAM and iWork ’09 for $1,317.

If iMacs are more your style, Apple has a number of the popular desktop computers, starting at $849 for a 20-inch 2.66GHz version. A faster (3.06GHz) iMac with bigger display (27-inch) from Expercom also includes 8GB of RAM and 3 years of Apple Care for $1,897.

For iPod lovers on your list, there are deals on 8GB and 16GB iPod nanos, as well as 160GB iPod classic. Along the way, we also check out the latest App Store price drops and software for your iPhone or iPod touch.

For details, check out CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.

Apple’s delays shipping its newest iMacs increasingly point to the Cupertino, Calif. company having trouble pushing the desktop machines out the door fast enough to meet demand. “I can’t imagine in their wildest dreams they would have thought they would sell like this,” one report quoted NPD analyst Stephen Baker.

Debate over why Apple called Monday for a two-week waiting period centered on a rash of reports of buyers experiencing defective iMac displays, ranging from yellow-tinged screens to cracked hardware. In a statement, the Cupertino, Calif. firm apologized for delays due to the iMac being “a huge hit.” The company’s announcement was devoid of any specifics, however.

Every time Toshiba unveils a new NAND module, you should take note: that’s going to be a meaningful storage capacity when it’s time for Apple to refresh it’s line of iPhone OS devices.

Apple’s current line of flash-based devices, the iPhone 3Gs and iPod Touch, use Toshiba’s NAND flash memory modules to achieve their svelteness. The iPhone 3Gs uses a single 16GB or 32GB Toshiba NAND module, while the iPod Touch uses dual Toshiba NAND modules to double the storage.

Flash storage capacity roughly doubles every year, so it’s no surprise that Toshiba has just announced that they have now doubled the maximum capacity of its NAND modules from 32GB to 64GB. That means that next year’s refresh of the iPhone and iPod Touch should see the former packing 64GB of internal flash storage, while the latter will likely max out at 128GB.

128GB of storage is a magic number for the iPod Touch: 128GB means I can finally get rid of my 160GB iPod Classic and cram my iTunes library onto a Touch without worrying about juggling albums around like some sort of Walkman-wielding, early eighties troglodyte. For me, the whole point of living in music’s digital age is that there shouldn’t be a problem walking around with sixty two days worth of music crammed into my front pocket.

My guess is that once the iPod Touch gets to 128GB, you can say goodbye to the iPod Classic once and for all. It just no longer serves a point. Who thought your end-of-line would be written by Toshiba, though?

With all the discussion of the New York Times’s bizarre decision to run a column that states as received wisdom that the iPhone’s poor network performance in the United States is Apple’s fault and not AT&T’s, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the track record of reporter Randall Stross with regard to Steve Jobs.

So I visited his website, and I remembered where I’d seen his name — on the cover of a book I read in high school that made a tech prognosis so spectacularly wrong that it’s occasionally used as a case study against proclaiming whether a particular technology is a winner or loser. That book? Steve Jobs and the NeXT Big Thing. And its central premise was that Steve would never produce another tech industry hit. Seriously.

Operation Chokehold — a flashmob-style protest against AT&T that began as a joke on Fake Steve’s blog — looks like it may actually take place.

The meme is gathering a lot of steam on Twitter and Facebook, with people saying they plan to join the protest.

“We have got to do this!,” says Mashable reader pjserven, who set up a couple of Facbook pages to help mobilize protestors: an event page and a fanpage that makes it easy to invite friends.

The protest began with a Fake Steve post about an internal Apple memo — fake of course — about bringing AT&T’s network to its knees on Friday, December 18 at noon Pacific:

Subject: Operation Chokehold
On Friday, December 18, at noon Pacific time, we will attempt to overwhelm the AT&T data network and bring it to its knees. The goal is to have every iPhone user (or as many as we can) turn on a data intensive app and run that app for one solid hour. Send the message to AT&T that we are sick of their substandard network and sick of their abusive comments. The idea is we’ll create a digital flash mob. We’re calling it in Operation Chokehold. Join us and speak truth to power!

“I made up the note,” said Dan Lyons, aka Fake Steve. “A reader sent in the opposite idea — a boycott of AT&T for one day, everyone stops using their iPhone for a day, and we show them what’s what. I liked the sentiment but who’s going to stop using their iPhone? And for a whole day? I figured no one would go for it. But a one-hour flash mob of overuse? Now that i could see people doing.”

The fake memo follows Fake Steve’s inspired and widely-linked anti-AT&T rant last week. Fake Steve’s diatribe was prompted by comments by A&T CEO Ralph de la Vega’s saying the carrier may “incentivize” iPhone users to cut back on their usage.

Note: Operation Chokehold may adversely affect AT&T’s voice network and block emergency calls.

As we come down to crunch time to find the perfect presents, here are a few deals that would make perfect stocking stuffers. Along with being cool, they’ll save you some hard-earned cash along the way. If you haven’t nailed down that hardware purchase, we have a $1,750 MacBook Pro featuring a 2.66 GHz Core 2 Duo and 17-inch screen. Every indication points to the iPod touch being another popular gift this year. To protect that investment, we have a crystal hardcase (for 2nd gen touches) for just 39 cents. After all that clicking and wrapping, how about a present that costs zilch? Apple has unveiled their latest batch of App Store freebies, including JingleToe, a Mistletoe simulator.

For details on all these gift suggestions and even more deals, check out CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.

Apple founder and CEO Steve Jobs is a finalist for Time Magazine‘s Person of the Year. Jobs, who returned to lead Apple after a liver transplant, is in third place, just two votes behind U.S. President Barack Obama (2008 Person of the Year) and trails Iran protesters.

If he won, the title would follow Jobs’ win in November as Fortune‘s CEO of the Decade. Jobs is the single business person on the annual list for Time’s year-end cover.

The iTunes App Store saw a mass overhaul over the weekend in a move to more vibrantly showcase apps on their individual pages while simultaneously presenting more relevant information to potential buyers.

Inspired (as legend goes) by a piece of pizza with a slice missing, Namco employee Tōru Iwatani first released the classic game Puck-Man to Japanese arcades almost thirty years ago. Later that year, Puck-Man came to the United States by Midway, although wisely renamed with the knowledge of just how tempting it would be to erase just a slight wedge of that first P‘s loop. The rest is history: America’s had Pac-Man fever ever since.

While the classic Pac-Man game has since been expanded into a franchise of quasi-sequels and spin-off titles, what you might not know is that original Pac-Man designer Tōru Iwatani never had any part designing the sequels until 2007, when he was invited by Namco and Microsoft to design a true sequel to his original game. The result was Pac-Man Championship Edition and it was the best Pac-Man games since Ms. Pac-Man. And now it’s available for the iPhone and iPod Touch for $3.99.