While the idea of a sale at Apple, where sales are seldom seen, is tantalizing, if history is any indication, there’s no real reason to get too excited about Apple’s Black Friday plans. Last year, for instance, discounts were in the order of around 8 percent across its product lines. In other words, you’d save about $100 on items over $1,000, and much less on cheaper items like iPods. Not bad, but not great; generally people can get similar discounts using education or business purchasing discounts.

You can do better. There are lots of sites out there that will have deals that make sure your money goes further on Apple products on Friday. One recurring favorite is MacMall, which often offers discounts at least as steep as those offered by Apple itself, and often beats the official prices by at least a few dollars. Amazon  is another place to check for bigger reductions, especially since it offers access to many partner stores, as is MacConnection, which already has some decent sales running.

It’s even worth keeping an eye on Best Buy, which is apparently offering $150 off MacBook Pro and iMac devices this year, as well as $100 iTunes cards for only $80.

Don’t get me wrong. For Apple to loosen its tight grip on pricing enough to let you save even a few dollars on any of its products is reason enough to pick up that new MacBook you’ve been dreaming about, but make sure you can’t get a better deal elsewhere first; Apple isn’t running out of its own products anytime soon.

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Many of EA’s games manage to ride high in the charts even when priced above the $0.99 mark that seems to bring so many titles such a high degree of success. Offering 54 iPhone games and 15 iPad titles at $0.99 (as of this writing) is obviously an effort to flood those charts with EA titles in advance of the App Store freeze that begins on Dec. 22 and continues until Dec. 26, which also covers the period during which iOS apps enjoy the heaviest sales volume.

Why start now, a full six days prior to that freeze date? First, to build momentum. You don’t climb the charts within a couple of minutes. Apps like Angry Birds reach their lofty perches by doing a brisk business consistently. Starting now gives the EA titles a chance to gather steam.

More importantly, today is the release day for a ton of great new quality titles. Games like Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, World of Goo for iPad, and NOVA 2 are among the fresh crop of potential blockbusters. Other great titles, like Eternal Legacy, Dungeon Hunter 2, and Infinity Blade have only just recently arrived. Those games stand a pretty good chance of climbing and staying at the top of the charts, but they have one weakness: price.

As Endloop Studio’s Garry Seto pointed out to me on Twitter, big price drops are a common way for studios to steal attention from the major releases of competitors. EA seems to have taken this to the extreme with this scattershot approach to gaining chart traction.

All this jockeying for position is exciting to watch, and it results in cheaper prices for consumers, but also reveals the App Store’s limitations when it comes to promoting and selling software. Developers and publishers live or die by the App Store charts, and big studios with extensive libraries can pull this sort of stunt, while smaller fish have to struggle to get noticed. That discrepancy will become even more pronounced as time goes by, and the Mac App Store will likely bring the same kind of thing to OS X development, too.

What do you think? Should Apple implement some kind of controls around the holidays to prevent heavy hitters like EA from throwing their weight around, or is this just the unavoidable nature of the beast?

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From Apple’s U.S. Store website:

Come back to the Apple Online Store (or any Retail Store starting at 8 a.m.) for a special one-day-only holiday shopping event. You’ll find dozens of great iPad, iPod, and Mac gifts for everyone on your list. Mark your calendars now.

Though the company has been offering Black Friday discounts for several years now, Apple has extended what has been traditionally an American holiday to other countries, too, following the lead of many other retailers such as Amazon. Silicon Republic reports that Apple’s Irish online site is displaying the same ad. Exploring other international Apple Stores reveals it can also be found in the UK and Italy, but we’re not seeing the ad in Asian-based stores at this time.

Now, before you start camping outside your local store or sitting in front of your computer for hours in anticipation (prices are usually the same whether shopping online or in-store), it should be noted that Apple’s Black Friday discounts are usually much smaller than what you may be used to from Best Buy or other retailers. But, this is also one of the only annual sales that Apple provides, so if you’re looking to order your technology straight from Cupertino, this could be as good as it gets.

Though we haven’t seen details on this year’s deal yet, 2009 boasted various discounts such $11 to $41 off iPod models, $21 off Apple TV, $101 off some computer models, and discounts on other Apple and third-party accessories.

However, if you’re willing to purchase from another retailer, drop by Apple Insider on Black Friday for their pricing matrix that lists each Apple product’s price and discounts by retailer. Keep your eye on MacMall and OWC, too, to name just a few places that traditionally provide some Mac-related bargains. And be sure to let us know in the comments where else you might be able to snag a great deal.

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If you’re looking for a gift to buy yourself this holiday season (or someone else, I suppose, though I never find that people much like software gifts), the MacUpdate Holiday Bundle has just arrived and is well worth considering. Like MacHeist and many other software bundles, MacUpdate’s offers a heaping helping of software at a bargain basement price.

The bundle includes 11 quality Mac apps, including both utilities and games, and if you’re lucky enough to be one of the first 10,000 buyers, you also get three additional pieces of software at no extra charge (around 1,200 had been sold at the time of this writing). Best of all, if you’re unsure about any of the apps included, you can download a preview package that includes trial versions of each.

The total cost of the Holiday Bundle is $49.99, which is a nearly 90 percent discount from the cumulative regular price of $446.77. Even if two of the apps on offer are part of your prospective to-buy list, there’s no better time to snatch them up. Here’s a quick look at what’s included in the deal:

• Path Finder – Finder replacement. Looks like Finder, but features numerous enhancements, including a dual pane file browser, tabbed browsing, easy Mac package navigation, disk image creation and OS X command line access.
• Socialite – Used to be EventBox. It’s an aggregator for your social networks and news sources, including Google Reader, Facebook, Twitter and RSS. Learn more in our recent article about the program.
• Yep – PDF and document management app. It’s described by the developers as an iPhoto or iTunes for your iWork, Office and PDF files. You can navigate your file structure to find them and move them, and also preview them within the app.
• Radio Gaga – Nothing to do with the Lady of the same name. It’s an internet radio player and recorder. You can add your own stations or use the built-in directory of more than 10,000.
• Garage Sale – eBay auction creator and client. You can build your auction using templates and a WYSIWYG editor, broadcast them using Twitter, and also keep an eye on auctions you’re bidding on. PayPal support is also built-in.
• DragThing – An OS X launcher. It’s a dock, but more versatile than the one that ships with OS X, and you can have more than one using DragThing. Billed as a way to keep your desktop clean, so that you can have your files available without wasting all that space and memory.
• Speed Download – Download manager and accelerator. I’ve never used one of these, but this one does have the advantage of doubling as a full-featured FTP client, which is good enough for me.
• HealthNut – Calorie tracker and food diary. Just in time for helping exacerbate the guilt of stuffing your face over the holidays, and helping you stay on track with your consequent New Year’s resolution to lose weight.
• PCalc – Scientific calculator application. Features support for hex, octal and binary calculations and unit conversions, and is completely scriptable. Also includes a companion dashboard widget.
• Machinarium – The much-loved Mac puzzle/adventure game. You’re a robot who has to travel through a world of robots to find your robot lover. On the way, you’ll run into countless puzzles and brain teasers.
• iRip – A utility for getting music from your iPod onto your Mac. This is the one that made headlines a little while ago when it had to change its name to iRip because Apple took issue with its original name, “iPodRip.”

That’s the basic bundle, but as mentioned, you also get three other apps if you buy it soon. Those three are PowerTunes (manage multiple iTunes libraries), Holiday DVD Templates (self-explanatory) and FlagIt! (flag add-on for Apple Mail). The MacUpdate Holiday Bundle is only available for around 12 more days, so if you’re going to bite, you’ve got less than two weeks to do it.

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For a limited time, Microsoft is offering students the opportunity to grab one Windows 7 upgrade to either the Home Premium or Professional versions of the upcoming operating system for only $29.99, the same price that the single-user version of Snow Leopard retails for.

That’s $90 cheaper than the Home Premium upgrade costs at regular retail prices, and $170 off the price of the Professional version. There is a catch, though. You need to have a valid student email address from a U.S. educational institution (college or university) in order to qualify.

AppleInsider claims that there are similar deals in place in the UK, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Korea and Mexico, though I could only find a “Coming Soon” notice when I tried to change the country using a drop down menu at the top of the order page. Entering a valid Canadian university email address also got me nowhere.

Microsoft is very much aware that Apple’s student market share is one of the company’s most consistent strengths, despite recent incursions by low-cost netbook machines into that demographic. This deep discounting, and the accompanying 741.com micro-site on which it can be found show that Redmond is willing to go to great lengths to try to recapture some of the youth market.

If you’re planning on taking advantage of this deal using yours or a relative’s student email address to install Windows 7 on your Boot Camp partition, remember that the deal only applies to upgrades, not full versions, so you’ll already need either Vista or XP installed for it to work.

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Don’t get too excited, though; you don’t get much of a price break for giving up physical media. HD movies on iTunes cost $19.99, which, barring new releases, isn’t that much of a discount from Blu-ray prices. And the file sizes are likely enormous, so plan on either upgrading your internal or moving that iTunes library to an external drive in order to accommodate them.

Launch titles for the service include “Punisher: War Zone,” “Bangkok Dangerous,” and some movies that are actually worth buying, like “Transporter 3.” A number of pre-orders are also available, including the wildly popular teen vampire love story, “Twilight,” and the latest Bond installment, “Quantum of Solace.” The movie files will play no problem on your Apple mobile devices, too, although in standard definition.

I should point out that HD movie purchases are not yet available in the Canadian or UK stores (the only two international stores that I checked so far), and Apple hasn’t released details as to when they might be made available. Currently in the Canadian iTunes store, you can only buy HD TV shows using Apple TV, though the UK store has them available for computer and Apple TV users. I really hope they don’t plan on running the same scheme for HD movies here in Canada as they do for TV shows, because I refuse to be bullied into buying an Apple TV when we don’t have access to most major American network content.

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Many of you will be familiar with the iPhone application Where To which provides a quick way to find points of interest around you (whether you’re looking for food, places to shop, fun things to do or a whole range of other options). The application has been available through the App Store since day one, and generated significant success on account of the intuitive user interface and simple execution.

Recent months saw the developers of the application, Tap Tap Tap, struggle with personal problems and reach a decision to sell their flagship application to a new developer. The new owner has recently been announced as Ortwin Gentz, the founder of a new iPhone software company called FutureTap, who purchased Where To in a transaction worth $70,000.

Ortwin has worked previously as the CTO of Equinux, a company famous for their development of Mac applications such as iSale — a two-times Apple Design Award winner. FutureTap today commenced operations by relaunching Where To in the iPhone App Store.

The developers behind Tap Tap Tap were cautious about who they sold the application to. John Casasanta states:

Without a doubt, Ortwin was the highest person on my list of potential purchasers. I still care about the app and I didn’t want to see it just fade off into oblivion, especially if it was acquired by a competitor who could potentially kill it.

Because of his past experience, Ortwin clearly understood what it would take to make things work out with Where To. And he seemed prepared to put in the necessary effort to do so.

Ortwin also feels that Where To is a great starting point for FutureTap, stating:

We’re excited to have Where To, the best point of interest app for the iPhone, back in the App Store. The launch in Germany, Austria and Switzerland is just the beginning of our efforts to go international. And we’ve some exciting new features in the pipeline.

It’s great to see that the sale and transfer of Where To has been a successful process, and FutureTap seem like a company able to further develop the features of the application in the future. The latest version has added new features such as German localization, new categories and brands. Where To now includes over 600 of these, making it easy to find whatever you’re looking for without having to type in search terms.

Version 1.5 is available starting today in the iPhone App Store and is being sold for $2.99. If you are interested in the details of the transaction process, more information is available from both Tap Tap Tap and FutureTap.

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The 13″ aluminum MacBook is an “almost” machine. It appeals to me in many aspects, being a roughly three-quarter-sized unibody MacBook Pro at a substantially lower price. But it falls just short of the slam-dunk it might have been.

For me, probably the biggest negative is the lack of a FireWire port. I think I could live quite happily with the glossy display that some object to, and while I’ve gotten comfortably used to the 1440 x 900 screen resolution in my PowerBook G4′s 17″ display (I knew that would spoil me), I don’t think downsizing to a 13.3″, 1280 x 800 screen would be a deal breaker for me. I’m still working fairly happily on the 1024 x 768 screens in my two old Pismo PowerBooks.

Consequently, I spent a lot of the day on Friday ruminating over whether or not to take advantage of Apple’s one-day $101 price cut on the aluminum MacBook at the expense of other things I should have been doing. In the “just do it” column were the arguments that Apple rarely has sales of any sort, and while a hundred bucks off wasn’t especially exciting, it would at least pay most of the sales tax, and with the Canadian dollar having dropped by more than 25 percent in relation to the U.S. greenback over the past year, I’m skeptical that Apple Canada will hold its current price points for much longer. It’s also the time of year that one starts thinking about income tax expense deductions.

However, on the downside, I have a provisional policy of not buying Revision A computer hardware, there’s the FireWire issue, the smaller screen issue, and that $101 really isn’t much of a discount off the C$1399 sticker price. It was almost enough to persuade me, but not quite. I’m looking to upgrade to a MacIntel machine, but I’m not desperate yet for a new computer. My old 1.33 GHz G4 machine is still anvil-dependable, very pleasant to use, and an astonishingly capable performer for its age, although it is struggling a bit to keep up with what I’m demanding of it lately.

There’s also the matter of Apple Certified Refurbished early 2008 2.4 GHz MacBook Pros selling for just C$150 dollars more than the Black Friday discounted unibody MacBook, and it’s equipped with both FireWire 400 and 800 ports, an ExpressCard 34 slot, a 2.1-inch larger LED backlit display with 1440 x 900 resolution (same res. as my current 17″ PowerBook), a more than 20 percent faster processor, a real discrete graphics processor with dedicated video RAM, and a backlit keyboard, all for C$650 less than the equivalent new model cost less than two months ago.

Another alternative I priced out was an old-school MacBook. Apple’s Black Friday discount on it was a paltry $51, and that didn’t seem like much of a deal at all compared with the unibody pricing out to $200 more, since the base model comes with just 1GB of RAM as opposed to 2GB, a 120GB hard drive instead of a 160GB unit, old-fashioned CCFL screen backlighting, and of course the white plastic enclosure instead of aluminum carved from a solid block of metal.

I could also get a Certified Refurbished early 2008 2.4 GHz Penryn MacBook with a a FireWire port, 2GB of RAM and a 160GB hard drive for C$1054. The biggest drawback with the older model is its Intel GMA x3100 integrated graphics, rather than the unibody machine’s claimed 5x faster Nvidia 9400M graphics chipset, but I’m not a serious gamer and don’t do high-end graphics or video work, so that’s probably not a deal-breaker issue for me. What I really want is a unibody MacBook Pro, but it will probably be at least eight months to a year before refurbished examples of that currently future model become available, so a 2.4 GHz white MacBook might make a sensible tide-me-over machine for a year or two. Of course, that’s what the refurbished 17-incher was supposed to be when I bought it nearly three years ago!

So, in hindsight, what would you have done? Is a $100-off sale enough for you to jump the gun and buy an Apple notebook?

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Much has been written about VMware in recent months, with the release of Fusion 2.0. The software provides operating system virtualization, allowing you to run your favorite Windows applications and devices on any Intel-based Mac.

Today, until 11:59 PM Pacific Time, the VMware e-store is running a deal for 50% off of VMware Fusion. We recently covered a 25% discount promotion, which pales in comparison to the huge offer today.

To take advantage of the promotion, you need to enter the coupon code “CyberMondayDeal” (without the quotes!), at checkout. The 50% discount is available worldwide, but is a one day only offer — you’ll need to act quickly to take advantage of the deal.

The main two competitors to VMware Fusion are Parallels and Virtual PC, both offering similar functionality. An aggressive push is being made from VMware at present, and for Mac users in the U.S. and Canada, it is interesting to note that this 50% discount can be used in conjunction with a concurrent offer of a $30 rebate for those switching from Parallels or Virtual PC. If you own either of these packages, you’re able to pick up VMware Fusion for a mere $10 (unfortunately, this offer isn’t available for international users).

If you are in the market for a virtualization package, now would be an excellent time to make a purchase. If you’re undecided upon which company to go with, our comparison of VMware Fusion 2 and Parallels Desktop 4 will provide an interesting read.

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Amazon.com, for instance, is offering a $700 (compared to its price at the Apple Store before Tuesday’s release) discount on MacBook Pros, which makes this 15-inch model not much more expensive than the now-discontinued black MacBook. While this is a great deal for those looking for a still-powerful laptop at an affordable price, those hoping for the sub-$900 laptop Tuesday likely won’t see $1,780 as much of a deal.

If you already had that $800+ tucked away for a new Mac, don’t go blowing it all on cheese doodles and beer to drown your sorrow. Best Buy is now offering the entry level 13.3-inch white MacBook for $849.  Keep in mind, this is not the new entry-level white MacBook ($999) which now ships with a SuperDrive. Still, at $850, it’s almost an impulse buy for people holding that first student loan check and thinking about all the somewhat educational things they can do with it. The old MacBook Air is now down $400 from $1,799 to $1,399.

Apple themselves are offering some good deals via their refurbished hardware sales, the highlight being a well-spec’d 15.4 MacBook Pro 2.6GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, available for $1,799, a full $1,000 off of its original retail purchase price.

On the previously enjoyed front, Craig’s List and Kijiji have both seen a sharp increase in the number of ads offering MacBooks, MacBook Pros, and MacBook Airs for sale. While the used market appears flooded, price points have yet to see significant change despite the spike in supply, and in most cases it looks like you’d be better off buying new from authorized resellers.

Have you spotted any amazing deals? Let us know below.

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Freeverse’s App Store launch title Wingnuts Moto Chaser and Smallware’s Solebon Solitaire, two games which have received fairly high praise from reviewers, are on on sale for a limited time for only $0.99.

Moto Chaser (normally $5.99) is an accelerometer-controlled motorcycle racing game, with a variety of lush environments and Road Rash-style on-bike combat.  Players can select from multiple difficulty levels, a variety of riders and motorcycles. Steering is controlled by tilting the iPhone or iPod touch to either side, while a button on the lower left of the screen controls the gas.  Available here.

Solebon Solitaire (normally $9.99) includes 20 different Solitaire card games, including Kondike Deal 1 and Deal 3, Free Cell and Spiderette.  Card suit icons and numbers are large for added readability on the iPhone’s relatively small screen, and features stat tracking, scorekeeping, unlimited undo and autoplay.  Get it here.

If you come across any special pricing, drop us a line and we’ll include it in our next round.

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