Apple will participate in a Black Friday sale this Friday, November 25, and some Apple Stores will open at midnight to accomodate anxious shoppers. For those who don’t want to visit a physical store, Apple’s Online Store will also feature sales for the one day sale event.

• MacBook Air – Save $101
• MacBook Pro – Save $101
• iMac – Save $101
• iPad 2 – Save $41 to $61, depending on model
• iPod touch – Save $21 to $41, depending on model
• iPod Nano – Save $11

A large variety of accessories are also discounted, including Apple Wireless Keyboards, iPad smart covers, headsets, iPhone cases, and more.

The special one-day Apple shopping event.
This Friday, November 25.
Mark your calendar now, and come back to the Apple Online Store the day after Thanksgiving for the special one-day event. You’ll discover amazing iPad, iPod, and Mac gifts for everyone on your list.

Apple’s Black Friday sales are generally similar to educational discounts, except they apply to everyone. Last year, this meant $101 off iMac, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro models, a $41 savings off the iPad, and a $21 discount on the iPod touch. Other items often have minor discounts as well, but the iPhone typically retains the same pricing structure.

Black Friday is a shopping holiday that immediately follows the Thanksgiving holiday in the USA, while it’s generally US focused, many other countries also adopt sales on that date as well, and Apple has placed the same notification on most of their other worldwide sites, including UK, Australia, Canada, France, and Germany.

Check your local Apple Store hours if you plan on shopping in person, otherwise just visit the Apple Online Store on Friday.

Traveling abroad can quickly become frustrating when you attempt a search on Google.com and discover you are redirected to the local countries variant. This is convenient for things like local search and Maps, but if you’re trying to find results in English while you’re in a non-english speaking country the redirect is annoying.

The solution is simple enough: use the alternate NCR Google URL. NCR stands for “No Country Redirect” and will always display Google.com in English, whether you’re in India, Brazil, Honduras, Germany, or anywhere.

• http://www.google.com/ncr – always goes to Google.com

You can use Google’s Language Tools to set a primary language for a specific Google account as well, but the NCR link to be much easier to remember and more flexible.

This a fairly general tip and it applies to all web browsers and all OS’s, whether you’re using a MacBook Air, iPad, iPhone, Windows PC, Android phone, or anything else.

Letters to Steve: Inside the E-mail Inbox of Apple’s Steve Jobs is a new e-book from Mark Milian that catalogues the late CEO’s direct engagements with customers and fans through email.

This book is based on interviews with many of the customers and fans Jobs communicated with. These tales reveal the intricacies of how Jobs portrayed himself as likable and accessible through direct interaction with fans. He handled customer-service inquiries himself and carefully revealed hints about upcoming Apple products, guaranteeing headlines on blogs. However, some of these letters, when analyzed, provide a glimpse into his “reality distortion field,” in which he lobs insults, bends the truth and uses misdirection in order to manipulate anyone on the receiving end.

Some of the emails have been seen before on various forums and websites, but the book compiles them into an easily digestible format. It’s probably not going to be as compelling as the official biography, but for just a couple bucks it sounds enjoyable enough.

• Letters to Steve: Inside the E-mail Inbox of Apple’s Steve Jobs for $2.99

The book is offered exclusively through Amazon as a Kindle title, but you can read it on just about any hardware with the free Kindle app that works with iPhone, iPad, Mac OS X, Windows, Android, Windows Phone 7, Kindle Fire, and even Blackberry.

iCloud and iOS includes the ability to sync some iCloud data directly over a 3G cellular connection when a wireless network isn’t available. For now, this is limited to “Documents & Data” from the iWork suite of apps, which includes Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. This is a great feature, but due to the bandwidth usage, it should be used sparingly by those who don’t have large data plans with their carrier.

• Launch Settings and tap on “iCloud”
• Tap on “Documents & Data” and slide “Use Cellular” to ON

Be sure to closely monitor data usage with this and other cellular features as to avoid costly overage charges, unless you have an unlimited data plan, of course.

Apple will release an iPad 3 with a retina display running at 2048×1536 resolution next year, and the production of the IPS QXGA display is already underway by Samsung, Sharp, and LGD, according to a new report. Citing a confident analyst from DisplaySearch, CNET quotes “It’s happening–QXGA, 2048×1536. Panel production has started“.

Talk of an iPad 3 with a retina display isn’t anything new, theoretical discussion of such hardware started before the iPad 2 was even announced in 2011, with various pieces of evidence and conjecture surfacing early on.

Current iPad 3 rumors indicate the following possibilities:

• Retina Display – persistent rumors and reports suggest a high resolution display is all but guaranteed
• Quad Core CPU – references to a quad-core ARM CPU were found and quickly removed from Xcode earlier in the year, igniting speculation that a quad core chip could make it to the next generation of iOS hardware
• Siri – the hit AI assistant agent from iPhone 4S is likely to make it to other Apple hardware in the future, perhaps starting with iPad 3
• Dual Mode CDMA/GSM Support – it’s very likely the next iPad will include the same dual mode GSM and CDMA chip from the iPhone 4S, allowing Apple to produce a single 3G equipped iPad rather than separate CDMA and GSM devices
• Release Date – presumably the iPad 3 release will follow past iPad footsteps, with a release sometime around March or April of 2012

There are also some rumors suggesting the iPad 2 may stick around as a lower cost model, with the iPad 3 becoming a “Pro” addition that would turn the iPad into more of a product family. Apple offering a lower cost iPad may very well depend on the success of competing lower priced tablets, which thus far have struggled to gain traction in the marketplace.

iPad Mini with a 7.85″ Display to Debut Later in 2012?

Later in the aforementioned CNET report is a reference to an “mini iPad” that would include a 7.85″ display. Such a device would supposedly come in the second half of 2012, but only if there’s adequate market interest:

“If there’s demand there. There’s no reason they wouldn’t build a 7.85-inch iPad,” Shim said.

Demand for smaller screened tablets may end up depending on the success of the low priced Amazon Kindle Fire. A recent report indicated that Apple’s iPad maintains a dominating lead in tablet market share, but suggested the newly released Kindle Fire will place direct pressure on the iPad. Amazon’s tablet could be a motivating factor for Apple to be exploring an iPad with a smaller display.

While rumors are fascinating to ponder, it’s wise to take all Apple rumors with a grain of salt, especially considering how incredibly inaccurate and imaginative the iPhone 5 speculation ended up being. In other words, don’t believe it until it’s announced by Apple.

If you signed up for iTunes Match and you’re seeing some peculiar icons in your music library alongside track names, don’t miss this chart put together by Apple that explains what each icon means, helping you troubleshoot the problem.

The icons include:

• Cloud with a slash through it – ineligible for iTunes Match
• X’ed out cloud – removed from iCloud
• Cloud with an exclamation point – error uploading the song
• Double cloud with a slash through it – duplicate song exists
• Empty cloud – song is waiting to be processed

Why the cloud icons anyway? Because iTunes Match is part of iCloud, of course.

Apple started airing a new iPad 2 commercial titled “Love” last night, it follows the same theme set by past iPad 2 ads closely, and shows a variety of people using the device in different ways. Here’s the text:

For some, it’s a lifelong passion. For others, it’s something discovered yesterday. We all have things that speak to us. They drive us to get up early, and stay up late. Getting lost in the things we love, has never felt quite like this.

It’s another great iPad 2 ad, especially the ending shot of a kid using an iPad inside a homemade fort surrounded by plenty of dinosaurs. The full video is embedded below.

Quick Look is one of the better little features of Mac OS X, but a new hidden option in OS X Lion makes QuickLook even better by allowing you to select and copy text directly from the windows.

This awesome tip was sent in by Keir Thomas, the author of a new book called Mac Kung Fu and the guy who discovered the cool iTunes “Now Playing” notification that has since become popular on the Mac web. Without further ado, here’s the trick directly from Keir:

If you use Quick Look to view any files that feature text—such as PDFs or Word documents—you’ll notice that you can’t click and drag to highlight text. Clicking anywhere on the Quick Look window simply moves it around.

However, a secret setting will let you click and drag as usual to highlight text, and you can use the standard key combination of Command+C to copy text. The Quick Look window can still be moved around the screen by clicking and dragging its title bar, as with any other program window.

To activate the setting, open a Terminal window and type the following:

defaults write com.apple.finder QLEnableTextSelection -bool TRUE;killall Finder

The changes take effect immediately. To deactivate the setting, open a Terminal window and type the following:

defaults delete com.apple.finder QLEnableTextSelection;killall Finder

Apple will overtake HP as the worlds top PC vendor by mid-2012, thanks to tremendous iPad growth and increasingly strong Mac sales.

Currently, HP holds the top spot at 16% of the PC market, but Apple is already sitting very closely behind at 15%, and the anticipated release of iPad 3 early next year could very well be the product that pushes Apple into the lead. This data comes from research firm Canalys, who paints a rosy picture for Apple but does caution the newly released Kindle Fire from Amazon will place some pressure on future iPad sales.

Related, the Washington Post reports that Mac market share is at a 15 year high of 5.2%, growing 24.6% in a year, while the general PC market had comparatively slower growth of just 5.3% in the same period. Also, while the iPad controls more than 60% of the tablet market officially, real-world usage statistics show the iPad accounts for a dominating 97% of web traffic from tablets, suggesting competing tablets are

For the music lovers out there, DockArt takes the “Now Playing” notification concept a step further and actually replaces the iTunes Dock icon with the currently playing albums cover art. It’s a free iTunes plugin that is compatible with iTunes 10.4 or later, but has been confirmed to work in iTunes 10.5.1. This is how you get it working:

• Download DockArt for free from the developers page
• Quit iTunes
• From the OS X Desktop, hit Command+Shift+G to bring up the “Go To Folder” window and enter the following directory path:

~/Library/iTunes/iTunes Plug-Ins/

• Drag the ‘DockArt.bundle’ file into that folder
• Relaunch iTunes and start playing a song

You can further customize DockArt by going to “View > Visualizer > Options”, where you’ll see options to adjust the icon size, show the iTunes badge, progress bar, etc.

To get the most out of this plugin, use the iTunes “Get Album Art” feature to fill in any blank covers in your music collection. If an album or song doesn’t have cover art associated with it, the default iTunes icon gets displayed instead. This plugin generally looks best with larger Docks or with magnification enabled to see the most detail.

Thanks to Andrey for the tip from the comments!