One evening while catching up on my Apple news, I ran across this 9to5 Mac article about a bluetooth speaker from Logitech with surprising sound for its small package. After reading the 9to5 Mac article and a good number of Amazon reviews I decided to purchase the speaker in place of a dock of some kind.

When the speaker arrived, I was a little surprised by its small size. You can see the speaker between my iPad 2 and iPhone 5 in the below picture. The speaker is a little wider than the iPhone 5 but not as long.

Once I connected the speaker to my iPhone, I was again surprised. I wasn’t expecting a lot considering the small size of the speaker, but I was pleasantly amazed by the sound. I primarily use the speaker at home to listen to podcasts and baseball games via the MLB At Bat app. For those uses it performs quite well. When traveling, I use it to listen to music too. The speaker does distort when you turn it up and play music with moderate/high base. At lower volume levels, the distortion isn’t as noticeable however. When playing music with minimaI bass, the speaker sounds just fine. I wish the speaker came with some type of case or bag to use for traveling though. Currently I just toss it between some clothes in my suitcase.

Getting the speaker paired with my iPhone was as easy as turning the speaker on and holding the Bluetooth button on the touch display until the Bluetooth status light on the front of the speaker alternates blinking red and blue. I then opened the Bluetooth settings on my iPhone and scanned for available Bluetooth devices. Once paired, all iPhone sounds come out of the Bluetooth speaker, including keyboard clicks (if you haven’t turned them off) and notifications. The Logitech Mini Boombox also includes an auxiliary port on the back to use with any playback device that doesn’t have Bluetooth.

The speaker has a non-replaceable internal battery and you charge it with the included USB charger. The battery on this thing is amazing. I promptly turn it off after each use and each charge has lasted a minimum of several weeks.

I’ve had the speaker for about 6 months now and continue to use it weekly. When traveling I toss it in my bag as it provides much better sound than my MacBook Pro or my iPhone 5. The small physical size of the speaker makes it easy to bring along on trips. My family and friends that have heard music from the speaker have been quite impressed by the sound. The integrated music controls on the top of the speaker are a nice touch, though they can be difficult to see in direct sunlight.

This speaker has satisfied my wanting an iPhone speaker dock for my bedside table. It’s really the perfect size for my small bedside table and the sound and battery have been pleasant surprises. Long story short, this has been a great purchase. If you are in the market for a small iPhone dock or travel speaker, you should certainly consider the Logitech Mini Boombox.

Pros:
- Good sound from small package
- Music and volume buttons included on speaker make for easier playback control
- Long lasting battery

Cons:
- Distorts during music playback with moderate/heavy base
- No case/sleeve included to use when traveling
- The music and volume buttons on the top of the speaker can be difficult to see in direct sunlight

If you love live music, do yourself a favor and grab the iTunes Festival App now. In case you’re not familiar, the iTunes Festival is a concert series sponsored by Apple in London beginning in 2007. The 2012 lineup inclues acts like Usher, Band of Horses, Norah Jones, The Killers, Mumford & Sons, and many more. You can stream the concerts live or watch them after they have completed. You can view the shows in iTunes, via an iOS App, or via the iTunes Festival icon on the Apple TV. The shows are absolutely free to view!

Since I cut the cord last year, I didn’t have a way to view the Tour this year. As with most things these days, there’s an app for that. I purchased the NBC Tour de France Live Mobile app (App Store link). If you’re outside the United States, you may need to search your local App Store to find the proper app for your country. The NBC Tour de France Live Mobile app is universal so one purchase is good for all your iOS devices.

The app layout is very easy to navigate. Lining the bottom of the app is the basic navigation including Video, Standings, Riders, Photos, Stages, and a few more. Standings includes both stage and overall results for the 5 classifications (Team, Individual, Sprint, Climbing, and Under 25). The Riders section contains the most basic of information about the riders, while the Photos section has some good pictures of before, during, and after each stage. The Video section contains highlights of the stages, recaps, interviews, stage previews with Bob Roll, and more.

After watching a little of the prologue live on 3G via my iPhone and the stage 1 replay over wifi on my iPad, I’m quite disappointed with this app. My biggest complaint? The video quality is absolutely horrible. Even over wifi on my iPad, the stage 1 replay had pixelation on every single frame. The Tour de France is filmed in HD so there is no reason the video quality should be this poor. The beginning of the stage 1 replay video was unwatchable, while the end was better (maybe comparable to SD).

Besides the poor video quality, the app has a few other bugs and annoyances. Some of the stage routes aren’t showing up at all under the Stages section. The Standings, Riders, Photos, and News sections have this strange black bar with a vertical white line in the bottom right portion of the screen. I also wish there was a live audio feed so you can keep track of the race in low bandwidth areas without having to pull down the video feed. The app does have AirPlay support, but the video quality degrades even more when using it. Watching a stage replay kicks you out of the app and into Safari which I thought was a little odd.

I really wanted to like this app, but with a $15 price tag you expect a little more. Since the main feature of the app is live video, it’s hard to recommend the NBC Tour de France Live Mobile app when it fails at this. This feels like a rushed app. I’m hoping they can submit an update to address some/all of the current issues. I think the feature set is sufficient, now they just need to provide quality video and squash the bugs.

Update 7/11/2012: Video playback quality has been much better over the last week since this review. It even looks pretty good over Airplay to my 42″ TV.

For years, Starbucks has offered a free song from iTunes as part of their “Pick of the Week” program. A little in-store display has cards, like the above, with a promo code on the back that you redeem just like you would a iTunes gift card. Last fall, Starbucks expanded the program beyond songs to include “Apps, Books, TV, and More”. I still haven’t figured out what “More” means, but moving on.

As you can see in the picture above, the App Pick of the Week can include some killer apps. Snapseed is a very popular photo editing app that works on both iPhone and iPad. This weeks App Pick of the Week is also a great app, Instapaper. Instapaper is likely the most used app on my iPad. If you own an iPad and don’t have Instapaper, head to your local Starbucks, grab an Americano, and pick up your App Pick of the Week card for your free copy of Instapaper.

I realize this isn’t exactly new information to some, but I just wanted to point out some of the great apps that you can get for free with this program. If you already grab a coffee in the morning, it can be worth it to make your coffee run at Starbucks.

Content
Any plan to ditch cable should begin with a trip to Antenna Web. After plugging in your location information, Antenna Web will identify the TV signals you have the potential to pickup with an antenna. If you are in an area where an antenna will not pick up any/few stations, the decision to cut the cord is much more difficult. For me, I live in an urban area within range of all the local TV station signals. I only tried one antenna in my cable free setup and have been happy with that choice.

My journey to cable freedom began with purchasing the Mohu Leaf antenna. Since I was unsure if it would work, I bought the antenna while I still had my cable subscription. I wanted to be sure I had a workable solution before cutting the cord.

The Mohu Leaf looks like a laminated sheet of paper with a cord hanging out one side. When you first open the box, you can’t help but wonder if this antenna is actually going to pick up broadcast signals. I’m here to tell you it will. After attaching the antenna to my TV and positioning it, I received over 30 channels including all my local stations. I watched a beautiful HD picture on my TV for a few minutes and turned off my TV thinking my work was done. I was partially correct.

My wife likes to watch the news in the morning before she goes to work. When I came home the day after installing the antenna, she said the picture kept breaking up so she switched back to cable. I turned on the TV and watched it for a few minutes. Sure enough, the picture was clear for some period of time, then it began to pixelate and sometimes drop completely. My plan to ditch cable hit the first snag only a day after it began.

As it turned out, my iPhone helped me solve this issue. One piece of information Antenna Web gives you is the location of the station signal relative to your home, in the form of degrees. I took out my iPhone and opened the compass app. I found nearly every station was being transmitted from a location facing the rear of my home, not the front where the antenna was located. After testing the antenna with my Macbook Pro (more on that later), I was able to receive crystal clear HD signals that did not drop out. After I found a location suitable to hang the antenna in the rear of my home and ran the coaxial cable from the antenna to my TV, my plan to ditch cable really began to take shape.

DVR
Elgato makes great hardware and software and I use the EyeTV Hybrid as a replacement for my cable DVR. I purchased a second Mohu Leaf antenna and hung it on my office window facing my backyard. I’m able to pick up all the same channels as my living room TV and I use the EyeTV software to record them on my Mac. After encoding them into an iTunes compatible format, I’m able to play them back on a variety of Apple devices.

Apple TV
In all honesty, the Apple TV is probably the single most important piece in our cable free setup. Between my wife and I, we use the Apple TV at least a few hours per day. We subscribe to Netflix to get additional content like TV shows and movies. We use it to stream audio and video content from iTunes on my Mac. We also subscribe to iTunes Match so my wife can play music if my laptop is turned off. With the MLB.TV application on the Apple TV, I’m able to watch my Atlanta Braves battle for the NL East crown.

iPad/iPhone
I use my iOS devices with AirPlay to stream a lot of additional content to the Apple TV connected to our living room TV. In addition to streaming local content from your iPad to the Apple TV, the App Store has a lot of apps that provide additional content to stream or watch on the iPad itself. Apps like ABC Player, PBS, VEVO HD, TED, Vimeo, YouTube, and NPR Music provide a lot of quality content for free. I’m also able to watch the Braves play on the MLB At Bat app on my iPad.

Additional TVs
Due to the placement of my antenna, I was able to split the signal and run it to both the living room TV and the TV in my home bar. If your setup does not allow you to split the signal, you can replace additional cable boxes with another antenna or a set-top box like the Apple TV, Roku, or other device. You can also use the Apple Digital AV Adapter to hook up your iPad or select other iOS devices to most any TV in your home.

What’s Missing
There are only a few things I have not been able to replace in my cable free setup. The first and most missed are cooking shows. My Saturday mornings used to be filled with a relaxing breakfast and a few cooking shows on either Food Network or the Cooking Channel. I haven’t found an alternative method to obtain cooking shows. To a lesser extent I also haven’t replaced home improvement type shows (HGTV or DIY Network), though they were not something I watched all the time. I stopped frequently watching ESPN several years ago so I don’t really miss that in my cable free setup.

Overall
My wife and I have been pretty happy with our cable free setup. Between the antenna, the Apple TV (Netflix), and iTunes, we can get the vast majority of content we received via cable for a much lower cost. Our cable plus internet bill was $135. Our internet only bill is now $45. The savings in our monthly cable bill allowed us to spend a little extra money to purchase seasons 1-3 of Chuck on DVD. We started our re-watch of the series in February.

Besides the cost, one of the reasons behind ditching cable was to take back some of the leisure time in our lives. I’ve found myself watching less TV and I’ve replaced that viewing time with other hobbies like reading, woodworking, learning to code, and more. I’ve also been playing a number of iPad games and catching up on my Instapaper queue. If you can find a hobby you enjoy, you’ll miss cable even less.

So that’s how I cut the cord. Have you cut the cord? Share your success story, or lack there of, in the comments below. I’d like to hear what products or services you are using in your cable free setup!

I recently reviewed the book My New Mac Lion Edition and thought it was a well thought out and put together book. I asked the publisher if I could give away my review copy and they approved. So I’m giving it away to a reader of Apple Mac HQ. How do you enter? Just leave a comment below with your favorite feature in Lion or if you don’t need the book yourself, who you’d like to give it to and why. Maybe someone in your family recently received his/her first Mac and you think they would benefit from having this book. You can receive an extra entry into the giveaway if you tweet the below message. Just use the same name in the comment box as your twitter handle so I know who to credit with the additional entry. The deadline for entry is April 18th and I’ll pick a winner the following day. Use a real email address in the comment box below as that is how I’ll contact the winner. This contest is open to US residents only.

Didn’t win but still want to pick up a copy of the book? Amazon has it for less than $20.

Tweet this for an additional entry:

Apple Mac HQ is giving away a free copy of My New Mac Lion Edition. See here for details http://bit.ly/Hv9FDe #amhqgiveaway

This Friday at 8PM Eastern, perhaps my favorite TV show of all time will begin for the last time. Chuck, on NBC, ends its five season run Friday. I’ve talked about Chuck quite a few times on this website.

Why has a show with mediocre ratings become one of my favorite TV shows ever? Simply put, the show is a joy to watch. Action, comedy, drama, romance, geek references (some of which even go over my head), and heart. The two main characters, Chuck and Sarah, are the heart and soul of the show. Whoever cast Zachary Levi and Yvonne Strahovski in the lead roles should have definitely received a raise. The Chuck/Sarah relationship, while at times complicated, became the heartbeat of the series.

While Chuck has little to do with Apple, many Apple products have made it into the show through the years. Chuck was the first show I saw the iPhone make an appearance. An Apple Cinema Display and Mac Pro played a vital role in the Pilot. The iPad has shown up in several episodes of season 5.

Chuck will be the first show I’ve watched from Pilot all the way to final episode during the original airing. I still remember sitting down on my couch the first Monday night it aired and having one hell of a good time. Watching Chuck is easy, and that’s one of its greatest strengths. I’m going to be extremely sad this weekend as the show ends, but I’m thankful it got to go out on its own terms. Not many shows get that chance.

Despite being on the chopping block nearly every season, it survived to reach season 5. The show was beloved by critics and fans alike. Chuck even has its very own podcast. Here’s to Chuck, the little show that could for five seasons. If you haven’t watched it, what are you waiting for?

I haven’t done a review in quite some time here at Apple Mac HQ. Instead of doing a software review, as most of the previous reviews have covered, I’m doing a book review. Specifically My New Mac Lion Edition – Simple Projects to Get You Started by Wallace Wang.

Most of the books I read tend to fall in the biography, adventure (think “Into Thin Air”), and programming categories. My New Mac Lion Edition doesn’t fall into any of these categories, but will draw some similarities with a programming book in that the goal of the book is to get you to learn. If you’re a new Mac user or new computer user in general, this book will certainly accomplish the goal of learning more about your Mac.

One of the first things that impressed me about this book was contained in the first couple pages, the typically unexciting table of contents. A brief table of contents is followed by an insanely detailed table of contents. The table of contents allows for quick access to any part of the book if you want to skip ahead or reference any part of the book at a later time.

The book begins by offering a brief introduction suitable for anyone who has never used a computer before. Topics covered include introduction to terminology and actions like clicking, dragging, double-clicking, etc. Obviously if you’ve used a computer before, you can skip right past this introduction.

The 56 chapters in the book are organized into seven different parts. You can see a list of all the parts and their accompanying chapters here (halfway down the page). The intended audience for this book is new Mac users and I think the author, Wallace Wang, did a good job of covering topics for the core audience.

Part 1: Basic Training – Covers basics like using mouse controls and gestures to navigate within the Mac operating system. This part includes a very nice chart with common trackpad gestures (page 24). It goes into detail about using and customizing the Menu Bar and Dock. Chapters also cover new Lion specific features like Full Screen viewing, Mission Control, and Lauchpad.

Part 2: Wrangling Files and Folders – Covers the basics of file management using the Finder. To my surprise, it also instructs users on how to use one of my favorite OS X features, Quick Look. Quick Look is such an enormous time saving feature, I pray Microsoft copies it so that I can have it on my work computer running Windows 7. Part 2 covers more Lion specific features like AirDrop, Resume, Auto Save, and Versions. There is an entire chapter devoted to the life saving feature Time Machine too.

Part 3: Making Life Easier – Covers a lot of the items located in System Preferences like Hot Corners, User Accounts, Parental Controls, Universal Access, and more. Chapter 22 and 23 cover the Mac App Store and how to install, update, and remove software not purchased on the Mac App Store. I’ve heard stories about friends parents running Applications from disk images (dmg files) because they never knew you had to copy the application to the Applications folder. This part also covers the use of several built in Mac Applications like iCal and Address Book.

Part 4: Playing Music and Movies and Part 5: The Digital Shutterbug – If movies, pictures, and music are your reasons for owning a Mac, these two chapters have you covered. It includes the basics like playing music in iTunes and importing pictures to iPhoto. It also covers importing CDs into iTunes, playing DVDs, downloading podcasts and iTunes U content, and so much more. It was great to see a note about Podcasts in the book as I think it’s something most iTunes users don’t even know exist.

Part 6: Surfing and Sharing on the Internet – Safari is covered in detail in this part, including using the new Safari feature Reading List. Other topics include Mail, Face Time, and iChat.

Part 7: Maintaining Your Mac – Fittingly, the shortest part of the book is titled Maintaing Your Mac. Some good tips are included in this part however. Often overlook, but even gathering basic system information about your Mac is covered here. Page 444 includes information about disabling the Automatic Login feature, something I tell every Mac user to do. Instructions for encrypting your Mac HDD begin on page 448.

That’s a brief overview of the contents of My New Mac Lion Edition. I tried to include a mention of some of the more important parts of the book, but by no means did I mention everything. Some of the nice touches contained in parts of the book include several ways to perform the same action. At times where a menu action is shown, a keyboard shortcut is shown right below it. Each chapter ends with an “Additional Ideas” section which offer up the opportunity to learn more about a section or include alternative programs to perform similar tasks. For instance, the section on Face Time ended with a mention about Skype.  The book is filled with screenshots, you can hardly turn a page without seeing one, great for visual learners.

My New Mac Lion Edition would make a great gift for anyone who recently received his/her first Mac or for Windows switchers. It would also be beneficial for anyone upgrading from a much older version of OS X as many new Lion and iLife features are covered. If you are the computer support person in your family, My New Mac Lion Edition might be a cheap alternative to hours on the phone if someone in your family just purchased a Mac. You can pick up a copy for just shy of $19 on Amazon.

Full Disclosure: I was provided a review copy of this book.  If the publisher approves, I’ll be giving it away on this site.  Stay tuned.

Our deepest condolences go out to the family of Steve Jobs in this time of great sadness. May Steve rest in peace.

In what can only be described as shocking, Steve Jobs resigned as CEO of Apple Inc this evening. Here is his resignation letter in full (via WSJ):

CUPERTINO, Calif.–August 24, 2011–To the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community:

I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know.

Unfortunately, that day has come.

I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee.

As far as my successor goes, I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple.

I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.

I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you.

Steve

We all knew Steve was having health problems, but I never hoped it would come to this. Get well Steve.

When you first launch the app, you’re asked to sign in with your Netflix login. Once you sign in and allow QueueUp to access your account, you are taken to a simple search box after the app syncs your current queue information. Begin typing any movie or TV show into the box and click the search button. You’ll be presented with a beautiful list of results.

From there you can add to your queue or see additional information about your selection. If your content is available to stream, you’ll be shown two buttons to add to the queue of your choice. The red button adds the selection to your disc queue, while the blue button adds it to your instant queue. On the additional information view, you have the choice to add the selection to the top or bottom of your disc queue. After adding something to your queue, the app refreshes to show the remove button instead of the add button.

Essentially, that’s the extent of QueueUp. If you’re thinking that QueueUp sounds simple, you’re right. But that’s also the beauty of the app. QueueUp is a relatively simple app, but it performs that job incredibly well while looking great. Like a Brazilian super model walking down the runway, QueueUp makes something look simple and beautiful.

I’ve found myself using QueueUp quite frequently as movies or TV shows pop into my thoughts. Since Netflix removed the ability to add items to your disc queue from their iOS app, QueueUp has become my go to app for adding items into my Netflix queues.

If I could make one improvement to the app, I’d like to see a proper queue management feature. While you can add and remove items from your Netflix queue, your can’t reorder them or see them all in a list form. The app does exactly what it says it does, so this is a feature request and not a criticism of the app in its current form. The developer, Patrick Burleson, told me he has plans for additional features, but he’s keeping them a closely guarded secret for now.

QueueUp is developed by BitBQ and is available from the iOS App Store for $1.99. If you are a Netflix subscriber and frequently add items to either your disc or instant queue, I recommend giving QueueUp (iTunes link) a try.

Over the past few months I’ve been having some issues with my MacBook Pro. Random freezes and kernel panics were happening more than once a month, which is very uncommon for my laptop. I decided it was time to do a complete erase and install of OS X on my Mac. I was hoping to wait until OS X Lion was released, but the issues were really starting to annoy me so I just decided to go with it.

Quite frankly, the installation of OS X is the easy part. The backing up and preparation took longer than the install itself I believe. Below are the steps I used and I also included some good guidelines to limit any potential data loss. I made a conscience decision not to use Migration Assistant. Using Migration Assistant makes the process much easier, but I didn’t want to bring over any software or settings that might have been causing my issues.

Preparation
- Make sure you have installation media for all programs and OS X (.dmg or CD/DVD)
- Have all serial keys handy; I use 1Password to keep track of my serial number information
- Take a screen shot of your Applications folder, it makes a good reference for adding your applications back after you install OS X
- If any programs make use of a library file (many do), make note of the location of that file
- De-authorize iTunes (do this just before shutting down for the final time before installing OS X)

Backup
- If you have an iOS Device, sync it with iTunes and sync any additional programs you can. I used my iPhone to sync 1Password, Money and MacGourmet data so that I could restore from my iPhone if necessary. This also works well for iCal and Address Book.
- If any important programs have an export feature, use it to export your data to your Documents folder (or elsewhere)
- Run Time Machine
- Use SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner to create a bootable backup. Also, test the clone to make sure you can properly boot from it.
- Make sure your off site backup is up to date (I use Backblaze)

Restore
- Install OS X
- Begin to install applications
- Restore Data
- Once you have all data restored and are comfortable with everything, begin your normal backup procedures

So that’s it. I hope this was a help to some of you. It should be very useful once OS X Lion comes out this summer.

Video Monkey is my go to application when I need to convert video. Development of the application was very slow in 2010, but the project is still in development and it remains a very solid application. Any video that goes onto my original Apple TV is converted with Video Monkey.

1Password continues to be one of my favorite Mac applications. It makes managing your online passwords incredibly easy. 1Password 3 added some nice features, including the ability to manage software license information. I’ve entered a number of my software licenses into the application. The 1Password iPhone App (iTunes link) gives you the ability to make your login information mobile, which has been incredibly helpful at times. There is also a iPad App and Windows version as well.

If you want to manage multiple calendars, BusySync will make it easy. My wife and I use Google Calendar and BusySync bridges the gap between my iPhone, my work Outlook calendar, my Mac, and my wife’s calendar. For work and home, BusySync keeps my calendars in sync.

Cooking is one of my passions and MacGourmet is what I use to keep my recipes organized. I watch a ton of Food Network shows (Throwdown, Barefoot Contessa, and Giada At Home are some of my favorites) and have added countless recipes from their website. MacGourmet includes a very easy method to import recipes from the Food Network site and a handful of other popular recipe sites. For recipes on any website, the text clipping feature makes adding a recipe dead simple. MacGourmet touch (iTunes link) allows you to take your entire recipe collection with you on your iPhone or iPod touch. Having my recipes on my iPhone has been immensely useful when grocery shopping and I’m not sure what to make. MacGourmet 3 was released in 2010 and an iPad version and update to MacGourmet touch are both currently in development.

Caffeine easily allows you to suspend your power settings to prevent your Mac from going to sleep. I didn’t use Caffeine as much in 2010, but it’s still heavily used on my Mac. If you watch video on your Mac, you need this application. Best of all, it’s free!

I still write every AMHQ post with MarsEdit. Simply put, blogging with MarsEdit makes blogging easier. MarsEdit 3 was released this year, but I’m still running version 2.4.3. MarsEdit supports all the major blogging software platforms. If you blog, this application should be on your Mac.

After three years in beta, Skitch 1.0 finally hit in 2010. Nearly every screen shot you see on this website has been captured with Skitch. After capturing and resizing the picture, I just drag it straight from Skitch into MarsEdit and click insert. The application remains free with Skitch Plus offering additional features and storage on skitch.com for $19.95 a year.

After loosing faith in Cha-Ching, I began to look for alternatives to manage my finances on my Mac. I eventually settled on Money. The budgeting features are more solid than Cha-Ching and the free iPhone/iPad App (iTunes link) is very easy to use. I preferred the Cha-Ching UI over Money, but have no regrets in moving to Money after Cha-Ching was abandoned by the developer. Money is solid, easy to use, and actively developed. Having both a Mac application and iPhone app sealed the deal for me.

Like many retailers, Apple is holding their Black Friday deals close to their vest. The Apple homepage has one of the four secondary banners devoted to their “special one-day Apple shopping event”. Clicking that link however, just tells you to come back November 26th. Apple promises “dozens of great iPad, iPod, and Mac gifts for everyone on your list”. Based on previous years, expect Apple hardware discounts of 8% – 10%, and better deals on software and accessories. You can look at the past three Apple Black Friday deals here. If the new Apple TV gets discounted, I just might pick one up!

Update 11/25/2010:

Apple has released their Black Friday deals on the page linked above.  As suspected, discounts are in the range of previous years.  Save $101 on the iMac, Macbook Pro, and Macbook Air.  Save $41 on the iPad, $21 on the iPod touch, $5 on a number of Apple accessories, and more.  These aren’t the only discounts as the page says, “Tomorrow, you can save on these Apple products and many other accessories”.