9to5 Staff

Apple has launched a special one day-only sale on accessories for Mac, iPod and iPhone, available now online in the US and UK (and likely in other territories.
The sale is tagged,

We’re filing this one in the “interesting but doesn’t mean much” category.  Apple sometime last year trasferred the “TabletMac” trademark from Axitron who make those Modbooks out of MacBooks.  Keep in mind that Apple protects its trademarks pretty over-zealously.  For instance, it made the iPodRip developer change is name to iRip because apparantly Apple owns the “Pod” name.

By now, (for better or worse) we’re pretty sure Apple’s tablet will be based on the iPod OS software.  Therefore, TabletMac is only being protected to eliminate confusion over Apple’s Mac brand.

Amaon is announcing today that its Kindle tablet reading device (the one now using AT&T’s network) continues to be the most wished for, the most gifted, and the #1 bestselling product across all product categories.  It has supassed last year’s holiday sales and that’s before Cyber Monday. 

“Kindle is a great gift for anyone who loves to read and it’s flying off the shelves faster than any other product Amazon sells,” said Ian Freed, Vice President, Amazon Kindle. “We’re seeing lots of people buying from one to a handful of Kindles as gifts for friends or family, as well as many businesses and other organizations buying Kindles in large quantities for their employees or customers.”

Both of its major competitors from Sony and Barnes and Noble have sold out for the holiday season which not only bodes well for the tablet industry, it means Amazon has a monopoly on Christmas sales, if it can keep its inventory levels up.

Amazon’s Kindle is $259 while a refurbished device is $219.  The Kindle DX is $499 ($399 refurb).

Apple, Walmart and Amazon were the top three most-visited online retailers on Black Friday last week.

The latest ComScore figures reveal that Apple saw a 39 per cent increase (year-on-year) in traffic to its retail website – one of the biggest traffic increases among all retailers. Amazon traffic climbed 28 per cent.

For the holiday season-to-date, $10.57 billion has been spent online, marking a 3-percent increase versus the corresponding days last year. Black Friday (November 27) saw $595 million in online sales, making it the second heaviest online spending day to date in 2009 and representing an 11-percent increase versus Black Friday 2008.

Meanwhile Debbie Downer Gene Munster said the in-store sales were down.

Apple is being accused of employing its bulk purchasing position to manipulate flash memory prices in Korea today.

An article in the Korea Times cites industry sources, principally chipmakers, who seem to be frustrated because Apple will place a large order for the component but then subsequently buy less than originally demanded, generating market saturation and suppressing prices.

The article notes Apple

 [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NkBHMl8zI0&w=560&h=340]

Smule has introduced an update to its popular I Am T-Pain app and has also published a few figures detailing quite how popular the app has become.

According to the developers, over 10.2 million Auto-Tunes recordings have been created using the software, which lets users sing along with a few T-Pain songs while that Auto-Tune effect is applied to their voice.

The new version 1.1 of the app now allows players to sing over any song in their iTunes music library.

It also includes six previously unreleased T-Pain original beats, and three holiday classics to usher in the holidays Santa-Pain style.

We’ve known for awhile that Google’s Chrome browser is getting set to go into GoogleBeta

Apple appears to be making plans to add a dash of Cupertino magic to mapping and is searching for an iPhone Software Engineer to join the iPhone and iPod touch Maps team, MacRumors informs.

Seems the new post is all about taking Maps to the next level, or, as the ad explains:

Apple products account for three of the top four slots in Amazon

 [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjzyBZZr8vM&w=560&h=340]

Thanks to Gizmodo, here

Today we learned that new iPhones were found using apps with tracking software in the San Francisco area.  The news is not surprising since the same thing has happened around this time of year for the past few years.  This is the traditional time that Apple starts testing new iPhone hardware for release in summer.

What is interesting about today’s information is that the new iPhone hardware is denoted as 3,1.

Former iPhones were labelled like this:

• OG iPhone=  1,1
• iPhone3G =   1,2
• iPhone 3GS= 2,1
• iPhone(PA Semi?) = 3,1

The iPhone 3G wasn’t a big upgrade from the original iPhone, hence only the point upgrade in the hardware code number.  While it did add a 3G radio and GPS, the processor was still the ARM 11-based Samsung chip that was also used in the original iPod Touches.  

The 3GS hardware upgrade was a different processor entirely.  While Samsung was still the supplier, it was now a ARM Cortex A8 based unit that provides the massive speed gains in the new iPhone 3GS hardware (and new iPod touches).

Will we see even more speed in the next iPhone?

The 3,1 moniker indicates that the new iPhone hardware is a significant upgrade from the iPhone 3GS -perhaps one with a processor from PA Semi.  Apple bought PA Semi two years ago.  Steve Jobs previously told the New York Times , “PA Semi is going to do system-on-chips for iPhones and iPods.”

If things progress as expected, the next Mac Pro won’t have any problem competing with high end iMacs for the speed crown amongst Apple machines.  HardMac (via MacRumors) profiles the next generation Intel “Gulftown” Core i9 processors which they expect to see in high end Mac Pros in early 2010.  The processor’s benchmarks were “released early” by PCLAB.pl. 

The skinny is this: The smaller 32nm process die and 50% more transistors allows the processors to operate 50% faster while using 10-50% less power:

First figures indicate that this CPU is very promising. At equivalent clock speed, it is 50% faster than the corresponding quad core Xeon for parallel tasks. Despite having 50% more transistors, the CPU strongly benefits from 32-nm engraving as it drains 50% less power in idle mode and 10% less in full loading mode.

How do you arrive at 24 processors from six cores?  With a dual-chip configuration (12 real cores) and threading available on these chips which enables each core (24) to function as two, you get two dozen logical cores to work with.

Current Mac Pros top out at dual 2.93Ghz quad core Intel Xeon processors.  Snow Leopard’s Grand Central Dispatch technology should allow the Mac OS to take full advantage of many cores (both real and virtual via threading) offered by the new Core i9 line of processors.

Apple

Sony may have come up with a pretty good gaming smartphone of its own, in the form of the new Satio smartphone – which at least one games developer says

For all the talk of app store disapprovals for no good reason, sometimes Apps make it into the store that perhaps shouldn

As always, the best deals on the web are in the 9to5Toys section.  Today we’ll be streaming all of the best Black Friday deals throughout the day (feel free to share some in the comments). Some notables:

All Stores:

• Apple Black Friday Deals
• Amazon Black Friday Sales
• Walmart Black Friday Sale now live
• Other World Computing
• TigerDirect.com Pink Friday Sale now live
• JR.com posts Black Friday Sale
• Staples Black Friday Early Bird Specials available online
• eForCity.com Black Friday Web Buster: 30% off sitewide
• OnSale.com Black Friday Sale live now
• Dell Home Black Friday Sale now live
• Lowe’s Super Friday Sneak Peek ad live now
• Sears Black Friday Sale live now
• Radio Shack Shack Friday Sale live now
• Sam’s Club Black Friday Sale live now
• 6th Avenue Electronics Thanksgiving Day Sale live now
• Dick’s Sporting Goods Black Friday Doorbuster deals now live

Black Friday has finally hit Apple’s US Store though most of their deals don’t surpass Amazon, who are extremely aggressive this week.  Amazon also offer another $10 off for Discover card purchases and don’t make you jump through rebate hoops like other discounters (MacMall, MacConnection, ClubMac).  (Amazon has free shipping and is tax free to most states as well.)

Apple

Yeah we know it isn’t really Black Friday…but whatever.  Good deals for y’all in the Eastern Hemisphere.

Apple