TDL Live This week: (11/17-11/24)

We understand not everyone can watch TDL Live Monday nights at 9PM ET. So from time to time, we like to get you caught up on what you missed:

Also, straight from our secret vault, here are the show notes and links that made the show possible:

Apple to launch ‘aggressive’ Black Friday sale?
http://blogs.zdnet.com/gadgetreviews/?p=495
As Black Friday sales begin to leak on the Web, experts at Barclays Capital say they expect Apple to counter rival PC vendors’ promotions with a one-day sale more aggressive than usual, offering deep discounts on a number of Mac models.

Low cost notebooks top the list of the most heavily-discounted electronics items poised to dominate this year’s sales, with Dell planning to offer a $299 Linux model via its website

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USB 3.0 full specs promise 10X speed boost
http://www.electronista.com/articles/08/11/17/usb.3.final.spec/

The USB 3.0 Promoter Group today revealed the full specifications for its namesake interface standard and so greenlit development of computer platforms and devices using the technology. The new peripheral format will now officially peak at 5Gbps, or about ten times faster than the 2.0 protocol. In actual tests, 25GB of data transfers in nearly 14 minutes over USB 2.0 but just 70 seconds over USB 3.0, significantly outpacing FireWire 800 as well as many hard drives.

FireWire isn't remaining static and should be upgraded to the S3200 standard ahead of USB 3.0 to provide about 3.2Gbps of bandwidth and similar power managementfeatures.

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LEGO Indiana Jones for Mac slated for November 28th
http://www.macnn.com/articles/08/11/17/lego.indy.jones.on.nov.28/
The Mac edition ofLEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures should be released on November 28th, conversion companyFeral Interactive has announced. The game is a port of a title already available for Windows and console systems,

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Eric Wilfrid is the new MacBU GM at Microsoft
http://www.officeformac.com/blog/New-MacBU-GM

Eric is a 14-year veteran of Microsoft's Mac team, having most recently worked as Product Unit Manager of the MacBU Silicon Valley team, based in Mountain View, CA. In that role I managed a team of engineers in developing Office for Mac and other MacBU products.

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Apple quietly discontinues the 23" Cinema Display
http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2008/11/17/apple-quietly-discontinues-the-23-cinema-display
The discontinued status means that Apple is out of stock of the remaining new 23" Cinema Displays, and those waiting patiently to get their hands on the 24" LED Cinema Display have good reason to believe it should be coming any day now.

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Apple set to release Mac OS X 10.5.6 soon
http://www.macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/apple_set_to_release_mac_os_x_1056_soon/
The release of Mac OS X 10.5.6 could be just around the corner. The update is slated to deliver wide-ranging fixes to Apple's operating system," Stephen Withers reports for iTWire.

"Developer notes accompanying various seed versions of Mac OS X 10.5.6 have been leaked by Portuguese-language web site hmbt.org. Those purportedly accompanying build 9G38 say there are no known issues with the update," Withers reports. "While that does not guarantee that 10.5.6 will arrive in the next few days, it is a sign that the project is not far from completion unless some significant problems are found in the latest changes."
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iPhone: Has Google lost its voice?
http://apple20.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/11/15/iphone-has-google-lost-its-voice-search/
John Markoff’s story in the New York Timesabout Google (GOOG) bringing voice activation to the iPhone, letting you search for everything from pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge to the length of a giant squid just by talking into your phone.
Google was under the impression that the application would be live on the App Store on Friday (obviously, since they pushed all significant press attention to it). Sometime Friday they found out Apple wouldn’t be pushing it, despite the fact that Google submitted it for review earlier in the week and got a thumbs up for Friday. One source says they’ve had little direct contact with Apple during the review, instead getting their updates via the standard iPhone developer tool, which has said “in review” for the last few days.

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Obama faces BlackBerry and Apple laptop ban

http://apcmag.com/obama_faces_blackberry_and_apple_laptop_ban.htm

His campaign embraced Web 2.0 technologies. He’s promised to appoint a ‘chief technical officer’ for the USA and will broadcast his weekly Address to the Nation via YouTube.

But from the date of his inauguration on January 20th 2008, if not beforehand, President-elect Barrack Obama will have to part with his beloved BlackBerry smartphone and maybe Apple laptop.

Concerns over email security and the need for all presidential correspondence to be entered into an official record, and eventually be open to public perusal, are expected to trump Obama’s own enthusiasm for technology.

It’s a tough break for the Geek-in-Chief, who according to The Telegraph’s list of ‘50 things you might not know about Barack Obama’ admits his ‘worst habit is constantly checking his BlackBerry’. ).

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Apple flirting with another record quarter for Mac sales

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/11/17/apple_flirting_with_another_record_quarter_for_mac_sales.html

fter spending 25 hours counting sales of iPhones and Macs at Apple's US-based retail chain, investment bank Piper Jaffray said it believes the company this quarter could meet or beat last quarter's record 2.6 million Mac sales total while again selling more than 6 million iPhones.

The firm's checks reveal the Cupertino-based company is selling an average of 28 iPhone 3Gs per day through each of its retail stores, down from 95 units per day in July, immediately following the handset's launch.

While those results would suggest a stark decline in quarterly sales, analyst Gene Munster said expanded international availability, the upcoming holiday shopping season, and the addition of Best Buy as an authorized iPhone reseller in US should combined to offset any slowdown in sales at the company's stores.

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Flash and AIR coming to ARM, but not necessarily iPhone

http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2008/11/17/flash-and-air-coming-to-arm-but-not-necessarily-iphone

At the Adobe 2008 MAX conference today, Adobe announced a partnership to bring Flash 10 and AIR to ARM processors that power, among many other devices, Apple's iPhones. While this marks some progress on answering complaints about poor Flash performance on the device, we don't think it's a good idea to start holding your breath for Flash (or especially AIR) on the iPhone. Yet, anyway.

As you probably remember, Flash hasn't had much luck in its quest for the iTunes App Store. While Adobe has practically begged Apple to allow one of its most profitable products onto the best-selling phone in the US, Steve Jobs ain't havin' it, publicly stating that Flash is too slow on the iPhone and Flash Lite is "not capable of being used with the web.

If you look at Adobe's news, it's really just an announcement of a forthcoming announcement, as Flash 10 and AIR won't arrive until the second half of 2009.

Apple and Adobe, say you're sorry, and shake hands

Apple, I want you to look at Adobe. Adobe, look at Apple. Now both of you have been misbehaving lately. Adobe, there's no need to upset the Apple faithful by claiming there won't be 64bit support in most Adobe apps anytime soon. Apple, shame on you for pinning Safari quits on Adobe (see image above)
Apple: "But he does! Adobe always crashes Safari!"
Adobe: "I do not! You just need to let users disable/enable plugins."

Stop it both of you. Now let's talk about the iPhone for a minute.
Adobe: "I don't wanna!"
Apple: "I'm not allowed to speculate!"

Ok, ok. Adobe, you said you have Flash working on a jailbroken iPhone, right?
Adobe: "Yeah, and we'd release it too, if Apple would let us!"
Apple: "Your app is nothing but a battery-draining, web clogging, poopy head."
Adobe: "Oh yeah, you're just scared people will prefer Flash and it will become a mobile standard just like on the web!"
Apple: "Am not!"
Adobe: "Are too!"
Apple: "People prefer QuickTime anyhow."
Adobe: "Oh yeah, then why do I have an installed base of nearly 98% of all computers?"
Apple: "Oh yeah, well QuickTime powers iTunes, the world's biggest online music store!"
Adobe: "Yeah, and you have to use Photoshop to make the graphics because Aperture's stinky!"
Apple: "Aperture isn't for making graphics, stupid."
Adobe: "Fine. I'll just develop my apps for the PC only!"
Apple: "Fine. and I'll make the iPhone Microsoft Silverlight friendly."
Adobe: "Fin-- oh wait. you don't mean that do you?"
Apple: "No... I guess not. It just came out.

There, now see, you both have something in common. I'm going to go back inside. Why don't you two play in the sandbox for a bit and see if you can come up with a solution...

Both of you, stop it. Seriously.

TDL Live: This week's Apple news and rumors

If you missed, below is this week's TDL Live, bringing you the roundup this week's Apple news and rumors, in handy video form. We're talking about the death of GoLive, the iTunes Music Store birthday, new iMacs and more, Enjoy!

April Apple Fantasy Merger: Adobe

(Each month we weigh the pros and cons of a particular potential merger for Apple. Please note the "fantasy" part of this speculation: Many times the mergers mentioned couldn't or wouldn't be realistically possible. But put all that aside and enjoy this month's edition of Fantasy Merger.)

For this month's edition of Apple fantasy merger, I went with an old standby: Adobe. Why? well, because frankly time may be running out on this merger rumor. There was a time when controlling Photoshop may have seen like a golden ticket to allow Apple to grow an even larger share of the creative community. However, with the release of Aperture, and most recently the 2.1 Aperture update supporting 3rd party plugins, the feature gap between the two programs continues to shrink.

However, there is one other Adobe property that might just make it all worth it for Apple: Flash. Flash has been widely accepted as the standard for internet media. Sure QuickTime (and Windows Media) provides a far superior picture, Flash, thanks to it's near-100% install base has become the streaming media format of choice for Youtube, Metacafe, and just about every other online video site.

And if you follow iPhone news, it would be hard to miss the back and forth struggle of bringing Flash to the phone. Some people think it's the missing piece to completing the feature set of the phone, while others see it as a nuisance. Yes, the code can seem bloated. But imagine what Apple could do under the hood... While all web video is slowly migrating to the h.264 open standard, think of the interactive possibilities if Flash and QuickTime became one. You could create interactive slide shows with iPhoto, giving people the ability to add their own features. You could make the full feature set of Photoshop available online for manipulation and adjustment of the pictures. As we move past disc-based media, the winner in online content might be the first format that allows for stunning playback and ease of purchase, as iTunes and QuickTime already do, coupled with the authoring tools, and universal install base Flash provides.

There would still be a big "get" for Apple in the creative market as well. While they would acquire Premiere, a Final Cut Pro competitor, they would also get After Effect, which is far and away the most popular/most used effects software for video production.

Apple could make even greater in-roads in the consumer market with the Flash/QuickTime combination, while simultaneously bringing another important product into their pro software portfolio.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments,