News Roundup for November the 26th

We’ve got some rather brilliant news to start with: it seems that Steve Jobs will be playing Santa this year. Just send him your wish list then sit back and wait for the big day. We’ve already put in our request for a fully-loaded Mac Pro, a prototype TableMac, and some readers. Maybe you could ask for the Apple NetBook which is absouletely definitely for sure coming next year? Just get someone else to open whatever box Steve sends you. It may be a bomb, or, if you’re really unlucky, a ‘pink’ Zune phone.

But if you choose instead to go down the conventional route to getting your tech gifts — eg. buying them for yourself, wrapping them, popping them under the tree and then drinking so much that when you come to open them they’re a genuine surprise — the Apple Store has just cranked its competitiveness up a notch or two. Sales staff are now authorised to match competitors’ prices. Our advice? If you’re going to try and wrangle yourself a good deal in this way, it’s probably best to get in early. I’m betting that by December the 24th those Apple Stores are going to be staffed by some grumpy little elves. Wearing “So f— off and by it on eBay then” T-shirts.

Okay, I know we’ve typed this before, but this time it’s really truly honestly correct — those new DisplayPort-equipped 24″ LED LCD Cinema Displays are now shipping. Whether they’ll allow for external HD vid viewing is yet to be seen. Meantime, Apple’s released QuickTime 7.5.7, which should at least allow you to view standard def videos from the new MacBooks on monitors and projectors. But remember what they say about 7.5.7 versions, right? Yeah. Don’t say you haven’t been warned. Also in pointless DRM news, Apple have told hacker site BluWiki to zip it where ways to hack iTunes database encryption is concerned. And I can see their point. I once got stuck sat next to one of those guys at a dinner party. And I though I was dull.

And in old news, we have confirmation that the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority has banned that iPhone advert where someone’s using the internet “really fast.” So who wants to randomly bombard the ASA with complaints that contrary to what they claim, most of those people in the Microsoft adverts are in fact, well, people, and not PCs? Come on, what else have we got to do today?