Anytime you can pick up something for $50 that would otherwise cost you more than $450, it’s worth a second look. Such steep discounts can be a sign of utter worthlessness in some cases, in others, possibly a short-lived bargain you’re thankful to have come across.

MacUpdate has one such opportunity Mac users might want to take a look at. They even have a cute little countdown clock on the page telling you how long you’ve got left to decide to pull the trigger. At this writing the clock stands at 10d 21h 2m 42s.

Among the software titles in the bundle:

Drive Genius 2 ($99):    Currently the highest-rated disk utility on the market. Used by Mac Geniuses at Apple Stores, Drive Genius diagnoses and repairs problems with your hard drive, optimizes your system, and much more. Buyers receive a link to download a bootable DVD image of the software to burn, which can be used to boot and fix any Mac that can run Mac OS X 10.5, including Apple’s newest laptops.

RapidWeaver 4 ($79):    Create powerful, professional-looking Web sites quickly and easily.

MacGourmet Deluxe ($44.95):    Think iTunes for food – track recipes, plan meals, manage wines, and more.

LittleSnitch 2 ($29.95):    Monitors your network connection to make sure your Mac only sends out what you want it to.

KeyCue 4 ($27):    Displays full keyboard shortcuts for all your applications; learn them and work faster.

MacPilot 3 ($19.95):    Access hundreds of hidden features to customize and improve your Mac OS X experience.

iVolume 3 ($29.95):    Ensures all your iTunes tracks play back at the same level, so you never have to adjust the volume individually.

There’s more. See the post at MacMerc or head on over to MacUpdate. The clock is ticking.

Via MacMerc

Other than some irritation about the death of FireWire and a few missing video output adapters from the Mini DisplayPort, the new Aluminum MacBooks are pretty much perfect. They’re fast, they run cool, and are incredibly light but also incredibly strong.

But not every MacBook out in MacVille is behaving nicely. As a matter of fact, many users on Apple’s support forums claim that their MacBooks became incredibly unstable after upgrading their RAM with third-party hardware. Frequent freezes, program crashes, garbled data on the screen. Though it’s anecdotal, most also claim that their problems went away upon switching back to the factory-installed memory from Apple, or upon taking it in to Apple for a swap. Even the normally impeccable OWC and Crucial are alleged to be having problems here.

This is a big surprise to me, not least because I installed Crucial RAM in my new MacBook more than a month ago and have experienced nothing but performance improvements ever since. It’s always possible that very minute changes in hardware between models could cause trouble. I have a 2.4 Ghz machine, so there could be an issue with the lower-speed machines, or it could just be that I got lucky. Anyone dealing with this?

jkontherun via TUAW

Apple Bomb Pillow from MicroRevolt

Several months ago when I logged into my Netflix account to check my queue and saw the world’s best movie rental service was offering instant streaming, I got all kinds of excited. Despite the joy of impressive two day turn-around service on physical DVDs through the US Mail, I thrilled to the prospect of being able to watch something new right now.

Clicking the “Learn More” button brought me quickly to earth, however, and I must admit I was disappointed, though not surprised to learn the streaming service was, at that point, available to Windows users only.

To their credit, Netflix rolled out a beta version of their “Watch Instantly” service to a limited number of Mac users at the beginning of November, and it’s clear the company values its Mac subscriber base because Thursday it sent out an email saying the streaming service is now available to all Mac users.

Except “all” doesn’t mean “every” in this particular case. The Microsoft Silverlight-based player requires an Intel processor, so the only Mac users who can “Watch Instantly” are those who bought Macs built by Apple in the past three years. As anyone who’s been paying attention knows, that’s an awful lot of potential Netflix customers, but as an Apple fan who appreciates the extended useful life Steve Jobs’ company builds into its products and who happily tends the flame of devotion for my five year-old PowerBook G4, I feel a little left out of the Netflix party.

It’s all good, though, because now I have another reason to sing the praises of the U.S. Mail.

Via MacWorld

Internet giant Google is among several technology companies reducing their presence at the upcoming Macworld Expo, a report said Friday.

According to AppleInsider, event organizer IDG is “frantically negotiating” to keep Google and other unnamed high-profile exhibitors from bypassing the annual gathering of Mac companies.

A 20 percent drop in companies planning to attend has forced IDG to extend a sign-up discount through Dec. 8, according to the Web site.

Here’s a demo video for Star Walk, the astronomy app for iPhone and iPod I posted on yesterday. The more I look at this app, and the more glowing comments it gets from both reviews on iTunes and CoM readers, the more I wish I’d paid a little better attention in my college astronomy class.

Thanks to reader Cliff for sending it in!

Tap Tap Dance, from the makers of the wildly popular Tap Tap Revenge, is an all new music game for your iPhone or iPod Touch, featuring top hits from some of the biggest electronic artists in the world like Moby, Justice, Daft Punk, The Chemical Brothers, and more. Built on the 2.0 engine of the free app Tap Tap Revenge, Tap Tap Dance features familiar rhythm game mechanics, presented in an all new smoother, richer package for $4.99.

Tap Tap Dance features 10 dance tracks, including:

– Technologic by Daft Punk
– Zdarlight by Digitalism
– Phantom Pt II (Soulwax Remix) by Justice
– Stratosphere by Junkie XL
– Disco Lies (Remix) by Moby
– Midnight Madness by The Chemical Brothers
– Goldrush by Tiesto
– Compressor by Soul Magic Orchestra (Exclusive)
– Where’s Your Head At by Basement Jaxx
– Daylight (Exclusive Morgan Page Remix) by Sunny Levine

The game includes an exclusive track by Soul Magic Orchestra, and an exclusive remix by Morgan Page of Sunny’s Levine’s Daylight. Three of the tracks, “Technologic,” by Daft Punk, “Disco Lies” by Moby and “Phantom Pt II” by Justice come with their own exclusive themes, offering game players a portable interactive music video experience, right on the iPhone or iPod touch.

Tap Tap Dance game is available now in the US from Apple’s App Store on iPhone and iPod touch and coming to select international App Stores soon.

Apple’s meteoric rise amid a crumbling economy is about to be doused with a cold shot of reality, a financial analyst warned investors Thursday. Mac sales will grow 10 percent in 2009, far below the earlier projected 43 percent increase, Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster said.

Munster cut his price target for Apple stock to $235 per share, down from $250.

“The economic and consumer spending outlook has deteriorated significantly over the last month, which we expect to continue through 2009,” Munster told clients.

The analyst expects Apple to earn $41.22 billion in 2009.

Long term users of fabulous text editor TextMate could be forgiven for feeling a little miffed. Before Apple released Leopard, there was excited talk of TextMate 2, and much discussion about the fact that it would be Leopard-only.

But Leopard appeared and became old news and there was still no sign of TextMate. Updates on the TextMate blog were few and far between.

What’s up? Is TextMate 2 still going to happen?

The answer is a definite YES, but with the simple caveat: BE PATIENT.

This topic has bubbled up several times on the TextMate mailing list and developer Allan Odgaard has made it plain that TM2 is in ongoing development. But like anyone who takes pride in his work, he doesn’t want to release it (or even talk about releasing it) until he’s got it up to a certain standard.

Alex Payne made passing reference to this yesterday, in his post How I use TextMate, saying he feared it had turned into abandonware. A minor update over Thanksgiving put his mind at rest, but still raised the TM2 question for others. As for what it might include, see Peter Haza’s informed posts here and here.

So, just to be clear: TM2 is coming. It’s not abandonware. It’s hang-in-there-ware.

Or, in Odgaard’s own words: “Put TM 2.0 up there with Duke Nukem Forever and be positively surprised the day it is released :)”

(Photo used under Creative Commons license, thanks to Dmitry Baranovskiy)

An early version of Windows 7, Microsoft’s follow-up to its ho-hum Vista operating software, may appear at a developers conference in mid-January.

Developers attending the 11-city one-day MSDN Developer Conferences will either be mailed or will receive the new software Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer touts as “Windows Vista, a lot better.”

Microsoft has said it would unveil Windows 7 in 2009.

On Monday night’s Colbert Report, the most feared television journalist in America let it be known he was none too happy that his Christmas Special Soundtrack was 15 spots down from Kanye West’s top selling album on iTunes. He called for the Colbert Nation to crash Apple’s iTunes servers at 5pm EST on Wednesday to vault his record to the top position and “force Kanye to admit I am the voice of this generation, of this decade.”

As of Tuesday night, Stephen Colbert’s disc had moved up two spots to #14, but his new rival, at this writing, is Britney Spears, whose album Circus is presently iTunes’ top seller.

There has been no word from the Colbert camp calling off the flashmob, nor comment regarding whether West’s arrogance remains in need of a takedown now that his record is no longer in first position. Knowing Colbert’s own reputation for having an outsized ego, however, it’s likely he’s still looking for a big bump in the polls on Wednesday.