Apple goodies for Xmas

MagnumMac is promising a 'white Christmas' of a slightly different flavour that's anything but cold – a last-but-one model MacBook in white. This is the one before the latest unibody, yet it still has the separate graphics, which is a good thing. Sound good?

Well, it certainly does sound good for the very special price of $1399 – and MagnumMac is quite prepared to trump that for you. Just add AppleCare to the price (three year extended warranty) and the chain, with stores in the four main New Zealand centres plus New Plymouth, will throw in a new Apple wireless keyboard and an Apple Magic Mouse. Together, these are worth $238.

MagnumMac is also offering the latest Adobe Photoshop Elements complete with a training CD for just $179, and Microsoft Office:Mac Student & Teacher edition is on sale for $269 and comes complete with a pair of Skullcandy headphones.

If you buy any Mac with the extended warranty from MagnumMac, you can get an Apple TV for just $129, saving you $300 ...

The little cheerful Auckland independent Mac store that can, Übertec in Parnell, has some Christmas deals cooking, too. At the moment, if you buy a Mac from Übertec, you get $250 off Apple accessories including software, keyboards, mice, airport, Apple TV, Applecare – even iPods.

Another deal is on headphones for your kids. Why? Well, it means you don't have to listen to their music! And you'll be looking after your kids at the same time – Griffin MyPhones deploy a built-in, always-on sound-control circuit to cap peak volume levels at 85 decibels, the maximum level recommended by many auditory health organisations.

Check them out – sounds a good idea for those long car trips and the specs are good, to maintain music quality: Übertec's current deal on the MyPhones is just $59.

There are other sounds, too – the iPod nano 4th Generation is going for $219. These were $249 … Premier audio vendor Sennheiser's Sport PMX earbuds are in Übertec for $99, Blackbox noise-cancelling M14 headphones are $379 and the JBL onstage IIIp charges your iPod or iPhone and plays music through the speakers – that's cut by $100 to $399.

The EyeTV 250 Plus hybrid TV tuner for the Mac has an onboard hardware encoder for higher quality recordings and smaller sized video files. It receives Freeview and analogue TV, and you can use it to convert videos from VHS tape to DVD-Video, all for $499.

$649 - 'Beats by Dr Dre' from Monster are plush headphones that used to cost $699. They combine extra-large speaker drivers and a high-power digital amplifier … now they're $649.

How about a pen for your iPhone? Or your trackpad, for that matter. You probably know that the iPhone and iPod touch require skin contact to work, so gloves and even long fingernails interfere. Made from light-weight aluminium alloy, the Pogo Sketch has a soft tip to glide easily over the surface of your trackpad or display, making it fun and easy to sketch and draw characters. It's $35 at Übertec.

Other Übertec deals include Gecko Pace Sensor Holder for the Nike Sports kit ($25), Bluelounge cable drops ($39), a LaCie Imakey 4GB for $59 and the book The Best Camera Is The One That's With You, iPhone Photography by Chase Jarvis ($25).

Feel like treating your iMac? Well, ho ho ho – a TwelveSouth Backpack is a sturdy little platform that mounts on the back of the iMac pedestal to give you a secure place to put an external hard drive, USB hub etc ($69).

Übertec also stocks the TwelveSouth Bookarc for $115.This is pretty cool – it's designed for those who park their closed laptops on desks connected to an external keyboard and monitor. It turns your laptop into a mini-tower desktop and is carved from strong, heavy-gauge steel. BookArc vertically holds any MacBook from the MacBook Air to the 17-inch MacBook Pro.

Online deals

Apple's New Zealand store is telling you to get the 'perfect gift' for your loved one. This being a personalised iPod touch ($349) or a 'custom configured' MacBook Pro starting at $1999.

Love might well be the case, but it's not between me and my bank manager, that's for sure. Purely business.

I'm sure there are people in the world – even in New Zealand – who give each other MacBook Pros for Christmas, but I don't know any of them.
iPod engraving is cool though – I did get a nano RED a couple of years ago for a daughter, and having a name on a teenager's iPod was definitely a smart idea. I guess you could engrave "Darling, sorry, I spent too much …"

Apple has posted a gift guide if you want your virtual fingers to do the walking, but it may be too late for delivery unless you get in today. (MagnumMac was offering iPod engraving too, last time I looked, at the Auckland, Newmarket store.)

For an expansive selection of third party Apple-related stuff, check out the Central North Island mail-order firm Totally Mac – and I've never seen Mac games as cheap as on the TM specials page but note, they're pretty old games and may have compatibility issues with newer OS X versions.

How about some green options? Downloading software is much greener than buying a disk with its packaging. Macs themselves are pretty green now, of course.

To celebrate the holiday season and the end of another year, TidBits in the US is having a 50-per cent-off sale on all their Take Control eBooks. The sale is only for eBooks, not for their at-cost print-on-demand versions. The sale runs until the end of December (the 31st, thus).

These books are great – they're written and edited by Mac experts, cover all sorts of topics, they're easy to follow, very detailed, and you can read them on-screen or print them out, as they're PDFs. You buy it, it downloads in moments ...

And they're so cheap! They cost just US$10-12 each (about $14-17). But that's without the discount. Just use this link to get the half-price versions.

Got any wannabe animators in your house? Check this deal out too, then – Flip Boom Classic, the fun animation software for kids, combined with Comic Boom, the easy to use software to create comic strips, is currently on sale for about NZ$55 (US$39.99) instead of usual US$59.99 (about NZ$83).

iPhone

Apple has posted a section called iTunes Rewind in the iPhone store telling you what movies, audiobooks, podcasts, songs and apps have topped the charts this year.

Now for me, being an acerbic old git, the top lists of movie and music sales is normally just a guarantee it's unadulterated tripe. Well, that should be 'adulterated tripe', these days. But this is not so in the case of apps, so it might be worth a look to see what other people have subjected to the test of heavy usage.

While you're at it, check out Appvent Calendar 09. Blacksmith Games presents this site, based on Advent Calendars, of course, that, until Christmas, reveals a new free game app every day. So far it's unlocked 33rd Division, Tridefense, Snorkelling, Totemo, Samurai and more. Blimp looks particularly cool (difficult, though).

Blacksmith Games is promising "special surprises" on December 23rd and December 24th – but that time, you won't be seeing free games, apparently.

Just go to AppventCalendar.com

And enjoy Christmas, you hear?

- Mark Webster mac-nz.com