Apple hardware is rarely discounted so when you can find a sale it’s always nice. There are some good deals out there for new MacBook Pro, MacBook, and MacBook Air models this Black Friday. Apple isn’t discounting all of their hardware, but Amazon is stepping in where Apple left off and offering discounts on the same gear with free shipping. If you’re looking to save some money, here are some of the deals floating around:
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Apple has posted their Black Friday sales deals for both the Apple Stores and Apple Online Store. You can expect about $100 off a new Mac, and a decent discount on the iPad and iPod series:

• iMac – $1098 ($101 discount)
• MacBook Pro – $1098 ($101 discount)
• MacBook Air – $1198 ($101 discount)
• iPod Nano – $138 ($11 discount)
• iPad – $458 ($41 discount)
• iPod touch – $208 ($21 discount)

If you’re looking for an iPhone, AT&T is offering a great Black Friday sale for an iPhone 4 for $99 with a 2 year contract, it’s a refurbed iPhone but it carries the same warranty as a new iPhone that otherwise costs $200. We’re not sure if Apple is going to match AT&T’s refurb iPhone deal.

The best deals from Apple are probably the MacBook Air and the iPad, the other prices are similar to what you get on Apple hardware with a student discount.

I’m not one to enjoy crowded shopping, so I personally would either shop online with Apple or just go to Amazon for the same discounts on most Apple hardware.

Amazon is offering some huge discounts on the latest version of Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac, the Home and Student edition are offered at a full 26% discount at the moment, which saves you $41 on the family pack of three licenses and $31 off the single license.

These are by far the cheapest prices I’ve seen for Office 2011, and it ships free from Amazon:

• Office Mac Home and Student 2011 – Family Pack (3 Licenses) – $108.99 (27% Discount)
• Office Mac Home and Student 2011 – Single License – $88.99 (26% Discount)

Business versions are also discounted but not quite as much, at 9% off a single license and 12% off 2 licenses.

Black Friday through Cyber Monday are truly some of the best times to find deals, if you’re anything like me you hate crowded shopping malls which makes these online deals that much more appealing. Thank you Amazon.

This is like the Inception of Windows errors; there’s a problem with “Reports and Solutions” so Windows is checking for a solution to that problem. Will it ever end or do we have to go deeper into this infinite Windows failure loop?

I’m just glad I no longer use Windows on any sort of regular basis, although I do have to use Internet Explorer on the Mac from time to time for browser testing… and what fun that is.

Thanks for sending this picture in Greg.

Amazon just slashed the price of the Seagate Momentus XT 500 GB 7200RPM 2.5″ SSD Hybrid Drive to $99 with free shipping, this is now a 32% discount from the MSRP and $22 cheaper than the already great deal from last week. Here’s what I said about the drive last week:

The Seagate Momentus XT 500GB is 2.5″ and will fit in the Mac Mini, MacBook, and MacBook Pro. The hard drive comes highly recommended for it’s very fast performance, which is achieved through a unique hybrid model that offers an onboard SSD drive that seamlessly caches frequently accessed data from the spinning 7200 RPM drive. The result is performance that is close to that of an SSD drive, but you gain significantly more disk space and pay a fraction of the price of a standard SSD drive.

I don’t know if this is part of a Black Friday sale or what, but this is one of the better upgrades you can get for a MacBook Pro for the price. Combine one of these SSD Hybrids with an 8GB RAM upgrade and your MacBook Pro will be one happy camper.

If you’re interested, head over to Amazon and grab the Seagate Momentus XT 500 GB 7200RPM 2.5″ SSD Hybrid Drive for $99.

If you’re in the market for an iPhone this Christmas, Black Friday might be the best time to buy. AT&T’s Black Friday Deals on the iPhone start at just $49 for an iPhone 3GS and $99 for an iPhone 4 16GB model, which is a full 50% off the retail price of a new iPhone 4 (yes, you still need to sign a 2 year contract). These prices are for refurbished units, but refurbs have the same warranty as a new iPhone from both AT&T and Apple, so there isn’t much reason to not buy one instead and save some cash.

AT&T iPhone Black Friday Deals & Sales

These are Black Friday only prices, so to get the discount you have to buy through AT&T on Friday, November 26: Read more »

Along with the release of the newer iOS updates and new versions of redsn0w, came the return of the so called “tethered jailbreak” which has caused some confusion as to it’s definition. I’ll explain what a tethered jailbreak is versus an untethered jailbreak, and why one is better than the other. If you want the short answer: an untethered jailbreak is always better.
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Bored with how your iPhone and iPad folders are looking? Well you can really stylize things by using wingdings and emoji icons to customize iOS folder labels. This gives each folder a much more interesting appearance, complete with little icons alongside the name.

The first thing you’ll want to do is be sure you have enabled the iOS Emoji keyboard on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, and then the rest is easy.

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Some users are reporting that their song and media library has disappeared after downloading iOS 4.2.1 and installing the update. You’ll know you’re effected because instead of your typical iPod music library loading in the iPod app, you’ll get a message that says “No Content” and telling you to download music from iTunes.

Fix the “No Content” after iOS 4.2.1 update bug

One of our commenters has found an even easier fix for the “No Content” bug with iOS 4.2.1 update:

• Tap on “Settings” and then on “General” and then on “International”
• Change your Language to another option, for example if your default is English, change it to Francais
• Relaunch the iPod app and wait for the iPod library to update
• Your music has returned, navigate back to Language settings and revert back to English (or your default)

Thank you to Griga for the iOS based solution! No syncing required with this method.

Here’s the original fix for the “No Content” bug: what you do to make your music and media content reappear:

• Disconnect your iPhone or iPod from your computer and then reconnect it again
• Select your device in iTunes
• Select Music and start playing a song from iTunes
• Sync your iPhone as usual
• Launch the iPod app, your music should appear

If your music and media library have not reappeared then try the process again, it should work.
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Redsn0w 0.9.6b4 works to jailbreak iOS 4.2.1, but for many devices it remains a tethered jailbreak. A tethered jailbreak means that you have to connect the iPhone or iPod touch to your computer and run redsn0w every time the device reboots or runs out of battery. Only the iPhone 3G, older iPhone 3GS, and older iPod touch 2G will work untethered with redsn0w. I would recommend most users wait for an untethered jailbreak since it will be easier in the longrun, but if you’re determined to jailbreak the latest iOS, here’s how:
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Civilization 5 for Mac has been released, but before you grab a copy you should check the system requirements to make sure your Mac can run the game. As usual, the better your Mac the better the game will run. Here are the official Mac system requirements:
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Redsn0w 0.9.6b4 has been released for download by the iPhone dev team, and it allows you to jailbreak iOS 4.2.1, but there’s a catch; not all hardware get an untethered jailbreak. Redsn0w 0.9.6b4 only supports the following devices for untethered jailbreaks: iPhone 3G, older iPhone 3GS, and older iPod touch 2G models. All other iOS devices will have to be plugged into your computer with redsn0w launched each time you reboot the device (or your battery dies). For this reason, I would recommend most people wait on trying to jailbreak iOS 4.2.1 until another untethered solution is available.

Download Redsn0w 0.9.6b4

You can grab the latest redsn0w release for Mac or Windows:

• redsn0w 0.9.6b4 for Mac – click here
• redsn0w 0.9.6b4 for Windows – click here or (Mirror 1)

Note about unlocking iOS 4.2.1
If you plan on unlocking your iPhone, do not update to iOS 4.2.1 and do not use redsn0w for now because it will update your baseband. Unlockers should save SSH blobs from their current firmware (iOS 4.1 or earlier) and wait for a PwnageTool update so that you can upgrade to iOS 4.2.1 without updating the devices firmware. If you update to 4.2.1 you risk losing the ability to unlock your iPhone.

Update about unlocking iOS 4.2.1
You can get the redsn0w 0.9.6b5 download which will work to jailbreak iOS 4.2.1 and allows you to unlock iOS 4.2.1 with ultrasn0w for iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS.

Update 2: redsn0w 0.9.6b6 download is now available and helps to resolve battery drain issues with unlocked iPhone 3GS and 3G models.

Update 3: Redsn0w 0.9.6rc8 is out.

Just in time for the holidays, Civilization 5 for Mac has been released and is now available for purchase!

Civ 5 has been one of the years most hotly anticipated gaming titles to come to the Mac platform, and it’s here at least.
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Sometimes a little fun is needed, and this time we’re sharing a goofy iPad picture of some LEGOS doing the sweeping rounds on an iPad to brush off a dirty display – well, at least that’s the fantasy.

Now this is obviously a goof, but I gotta admit I wish I had some Stormtrooper Legos to clean up my iPad screen with. If only it worked! Maybe one day they’ll be automated little robots to do so with… maybe….

On a more serious note, you can learn properly how to clean the iPad screen if you haven’t already. There are proper procedures to do so to prevent the screen from being damaged in the process.

The above picture was sent in by Tavis from Flickr.

If you have any fun or light hearted stuff to share our way, consider posting in the comments below or sending us an email.

IPSW stands rather simply for iOS Software, and IPSW files are basically just individual firmware downloads for specific iOS devices. These files can be used to update iOS devices manually with the help of iTunes or Finder. If you’ve recently downloaded an iOS IPSW file, you might be curious how to use it to update your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad. Using IPSW is often considered advanced but it’s actually pretty easy, just follow along with these directions and you’ll be along your way.

Before using a firmware file to update, you will want to backup the iOS or iPadOS device to be safe.

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Hot off the heals of a public release of the iOS 4.2.1 update, the iOS 4.2 SDK pack is now available for developers to download. Unlike the beta releases, any registered developer can download the new iOS 4.2 SDK without paying the $99 yearly membership fee, which is nice if you just want to explore the development environment without a membership commitment.

You’ll need an Apple Developer Login, and you can grab the SDK from iOS Developer Center, the download weighs in at a hefty 3.5 GB and is packaged with Xcode 3.2.5.

You can download iOS 4.2 directly from iTunes 10.1, but if you’d prefer to use a direct download link, here they are from Apple:

iOS 4.2.1 Direct Download

These are direct download links from Apple’s servers. It’s best to right-click on the file and then “Save As” to prevent any problems downloading the IPSW.
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The highly anticipated iOS 4.2 update for iPad and iPhone has been released for public download. This update is particularly enticing to iPad owners because it brings the full iOS 4 feature set including multitasking support and folders to the iPad. iOS 4.2 includes AirPrint for wireless printing, and AirPlay for wireless content streaming to all compatible devices. Additionally, owners of newer iOS hardware will gain free access to “Find My iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch” which helps to locate missing hardware.

Download iOS 4.2

The free iOS 4.2 update will be available first through iTunes, if launching iTunes doesn’t automatically alert you of the software update, you can do the following:

• Plug your iOS device into your computer
• Launch iTunes
• On the iOS device summary screen, click on “Check for Update”
• Follow the instructions to download and update to iOS 4.2

Remember to backup your device before proceeding. The release of iOS 4.2 is actually iOS 4.2.1 as build 8C148. If you are having problems with the iTunes update, you can use iOS 4.2.1 direct download links from Apple instead.

iOS 4.2 Compatibility

The iOS 4.2 update is compatible with the following hardware: iPad, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPod touch 2nd gen, iPod touch 3rd gen, iPod touch 4th gen. Missing from the list is AppleTV, which will get a modified iOS 4.1 update that includes AirPlay. You will need iTunes 10.1 to download and install the iOS 4.2 update on your device.