New iMacs to Go On Sale as Early as Tomorrow?

Belgium-iPhone.Lesoir.be claims that Apple will be delivering the new 21.5" iMac to Apple Premium Resellers in Belgium starting on Wednesday. Meanwhile, the 27" iMac model is still believed to be scheduled for December.


The site also believes that the new iMac would be available for online orders at approximately the same time.

Separately, we received an unconfirmed tip saying that the new iMacs would be ready to order tomorrow, Tuesday, November 27th. We're not sure if the time difference (6 hours behind U.S. Eastern) explains the conflicting time frames or if one (or both) are simply wrong. Neither sources has a track record, but both guesses are certainly realistic. Apple originally claimed that the 21.5" iMac would begin shipping in November.

Cyber Monday 2012: Zagg, Belkin, Hex3, BestBuy, Macs and More

The Monday after Black Friday has been dubbed Cyber Monday to reflect a large number of online purchases that takes place on that day. As a result, many retailers continue or begin online sales on Monday. Here's a selection of Apple-relevant Cyber Monday sales.


- Zagg - Popular iPhone/iPad accessory maker is offering 20% off Keyboard Cases and 50% off "almost everything else", including their Invisible Shield protection.


- Hex3 - 25% off two of their products with coupon code "Monday25". First is Jaja ($89.99 -> $67.49), a pressure sensitive stylus for the iPad that allows for 1024 levels of pressure. Interestingly, it uses high frequency sound to communicate with the iPad. The other product on sale is the AppTag Laser Blaster ($59.99 -> $45.99) which is an augmented reality gun that you can clip your iPhone to.

- Belkin - Popular Mac and iOS accessory company. 30% off everything with coupon code "CYBER30". Until noon PST.

- Marware - 30% off sitewide with coupon code "CYBERMONDAY2012"

- Das Keyboard - Mechanical keyboard for the Mac. 20% off with coupon code "DASCHEER"

Macs

- MacMall, BestBuy and Amazon continue to have discounts in place across a broad range of Apple products. Our Black Friday 2012 comparison price chart has been updated to reflect the latest prices.

Others

- Best Buy: Dell UltraSharp 27" LCD Monitor - $999.99 -> $649.99
- Best Buy: iTunes Gift Card - $100 Card for $85
- Best Buy: Refurbished 2TB Time Capsule - $179 ($299 New)
- Mac App Store: Fantastical - $19.99 -> $9.99
- Software Bundles: MacUtility Bundle, MacLegion Bundle, iStack Mac Bundle 2.0.

Some of the vendors listed are affiliate partners with MacRumors and referred sales may benefit the site financially.

iTunes Digital Gift Cards Now Available Through Facebook

Facebook today announced that it has added iTunes Store digital gift cards to its Facebook Gifts platform, making it easier for users to send iTunes credit to their networks of Facebook friends.

Starting today with Facebook Gifts, you can instantly gift your friends iTunes digital gifts and recommend albums, movies, games, apps, and more available on the iTunes Store.

Search for a specific song or album to recommend, or let your friend decide. iTunes digital gifts are available for $10, $15, $25, or $50.


AllThingsD notes that the partnership offers increased visibility for the iTunes Store and gives Facebook a part of what is currently estimated to be a $260 million business in iTunes Store gift cards for third-party retailers.

Per Apple’s last 10-K, the company generated $7.5 billion from the iTunes Store during fiscal year 2012. Industry sources say that more than $2 billion of that revenue comes directly from iTunes gift cards. Sources also tell us that existing retailers who sell iTunes gift cards (like Best Buy, Target and the like) usually keep around 13 percent of each gift-card dollar sold.

So that adds up to around, say, a $260 million-dollar market size for physical iTunes cards split among participating retailers, of which Facebook will now be an active participant. That pie is small compared to Facebook’s overall revenue ($3.71 billion in 2011), but another digital product with less overhead and high demand is definitely a win for Facebook’s Gifts department.
Apple and Facebook have had a bit of a rocky history, with the two companies having sparred over Apple's efforts to offer Facebook integration in its failed Ping social networking service for iTunes. The companies have, however, been working more closely together recently, with systemwide Facebook integration now included in iOS 6 and OS X Mountain Lion.

Next Version iOS 7’s Alerts [Concept]

Here’s How Jony Ive Should Re-Design iOS 7’s Alerts [Concept]




Right now, iOS’s notifications system is curiously bifurcated in design between the alert bubble system of iOS 4 and the banner notifications that appeared in iOS 5. A new concept floating around, though, has some great ideas on how these systems could be merged in iOS 7 by a new iOS UI design team lead by Jony Ive.

Over at The Verge, user Sentry makes the case for a new steamlined notifications system that takes iOS 5/6’s banner-styles and applies them to pop-up alerts, like so:

Here’s How Jony Ive Should Re-Design iOS 7’s Alerts [Concept]

Sentry explains the idea:

    [When] iOS 5 came around, [Apple] added a new type of alert. It brought a long overdue upgrade to the notifications system, by introducing an alert style that didn’t put a complete halt to whatever you were previously doing; banners. Banners are minimal and provide information in a condensed format that doesn’t need to take up the entire screen.


    One problem; the pop-up alerts still exist, and have gone unchanged. (for example, alerts don’t show an app icon indicator, which banners do despite taking up less space)

    Not only are they visually outdated, but they also visually segregate the app-based notifications into two unique UI styles (opaque white vs transparent dark blue). So why not unify the visual forms, and in the process finally get rid of the circa-’07 alert pop-up?

The meat of the concept is the biteSMS-like quick reply button, which allows you to quickly type a message in text-based apps.

But what about system alerts not tied to an individual app via push? Sentry imagines a solution something like this: