Popular and boisterous tech blog Boy Genius Report this week ran what one of their contacts claimed to be Apple's Black Friday ad. The ad claimed that Apple would be going against tradition and offering huge cuts across the Apple lineup.

Just how big were the claimed discounts? The ad claims that Apple will offer up to 30% off of all iPods, up to 25% off of all Macs and up to 15% off of accessories, software and other Mac hardware. Needless to say, these would be big, and I mean BIG, discounts for Apple to pull out on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. If they were true, that is.

This morning I braved the frosty morning to join 5-10 other shoppers in line at Verizon for the new Google-powered Motorola Droid. Sure, the Droid didn't come with nearly as much fanfare as Verizon would have hoped, and no professional line-sitters showed up like they did for the iPhone, but the release of the Droid will have a big affect on the cell phone business.

In June 2001 Apple introduced the world to iTunes, a music marketplace that largely changed the way we buy music. And now, almost a decade later rumor has it that Apple wants to revolutionize the way we get our television delivered by offering all you can watch TV for $30.

Before Apple can offer consumers the opportunity to ditch their cable subscriptions for an all-you-can-watch plan it has to convince the television networks that it's a good idea, just like it did with the music labels.

Given the numerous side projects of networks, like CBS' TV.com, and the attempts by cable companies to restrict online streaming to customers, Apple faces a big hurdle before it can offer a $30 unlimited TV package.

If you think all those thousands of free or low-cost iPhone apps that developers are frantically banging out are being created merely for goodwill or enjoyment, think again. As much as any other gewgaw or gimmick companies offer there is a plan that explains the madness, and it's mostly about marketing.

When Stanley Works, the famous maker of hand and power tools, developed its iPhone app, it did so with the idea of introducing the venerable brand to a new generation of consumers, the New York Times reports. Some 400,000 downloads later, the company christened the effort a success, even without knowing whether the app resulted in the single sale of a new hammer or saw.

Stop, children, what's that sound? Whole bunch of new iPods 'bout to touch down.

Despite the excellent selection of iPod apps that make back to school easier, now's not the time to buy a new iPod.

According to the Mac Buyer's Guide at Mac Rumors the iPod Touch, iPod Nano and iPod Classic are between 90 and 160 days overdue for an upgrade and the site recommends that you, "Don't Buy -- Updates soon."

Mac Rumors doesn't just analyze days since last upgrade to figure this out. It has a helping of iPod news every morning with their coffee to stay on top of what's coming up.

Score one for Facebook users everywhere. After it was discovered that certain applications were including ads that used profile images to push "Hot Singles" the company took notice and has changed its ad approval process protecting Facebook users.

This action is a great move for the company and shows that it is willing to listen to users even if it affects its cut of advertising revenue.

The new approval process doesn't sit well with everyone. Jennifer Martinez, who reported on the issue for GigaOm, worries that the unclear nature of the ad approval process will harm the community and create a situation similar to Apple's iPhone application approval process.

I'll leave it up to you if the "Zombie School" iPhone app game -- where players shoot at zombies on a school campus -- is as tasteless as the "Baby Shaker," a discontinued iPhone app where you can quiet a screaming baby by shaking the phone.

But either way, "Zombie School" was found offensive enough that Apple appears to have banned the game, according to Wired.com.

Come fall, Microsoft plans to open stores, right next door to Apple's. It's like an "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" commercial come to life.

I don't know what Microsoft's odds of success are. I was skeptical of Apple's stores, but it defied some pretty steep odds. Apple stores today are thriving enterprises.

Apple's plan from the beginning went against common sense. Pick high traffic, highly visible, high-rent locations. Go with pricey, incredibly slick designs like glass staircases and clear cube entryways. And include free services such as classes with purchase and a Genius Bar, a name some find a tad elitist. But then, some find the use of the term "a tad" elitist too.

Mostly, I found Apple's stated goal of using retail locations to increase household penetration of Macs to be overly optimistic. Macs were adored by many but for years, owned by just around 5% of the U.S. population. Opening stores (and launching that ill-fated "switch" campaign) seemed a difficult path to increasing market share.

The tech blogs are atwitter (and a-Twitter) about today's announcement of Apple's new iPhone 3GS. Its built-in driving directions, voice activation, and video camera will be turning the Apple Store near you into a geek parking lot late next week. From a budget standpoint, though, the big news isn't about new features. It's about new prices.

Starting next week, the lowest-priced iPhone (an 8GB 3G model, which is the current iPhone without those embellishments) will be just $99 with a contract, which isn't much more than the basic cheapie units your cell phone company gives for free with new contracts. Computer prices were knocked down, too. MacBook and MacBook Air laptops will also be cheaper, by as much as $700.

I'm a Mac ... and I'm conflicted. For the past 15 years, I've barely placed my finger on a PC, either at work or at home. I've spent most of my career as a magazine editor, a profession that relies almost exclusively on Macs as its primary tool, and over time, Apple's platform has necessarily been hardwired into my brain. But over the past year, as more consumers snap up iPhones and collect endlessly clever apps, my personal relationship with this company has begun to feel abusive.Today, the rest of the world is salivating over the next-gen iPhone, which goes on sale this month. And me? I'm seething over my two-year-old MacBook's third trip since August to the emergency room.

For years, Wal-Mart has become the go-to whipping boy for people looking to criticize capitalism.

Whether the focus has been on the chain's often-tacky merchandise, its tendency to stock its shelves with Chinese-made products, or its occasionally deplorable employee relations, Wal-Mart has been an easy symbol for brutal corporate slavemasters and commercialism gone amok.

Ironically, this fits beautifully with Wal-Mart's marketing model: Whereas one once had to search far and wide for examples of America's failings, the chain conveniently placed them all under one roof, transforming itself into a one-stop shop for cultural snobbery.

Cultural critiques, however, are a rich man's game, and the financial crisis has massively reduced the number of retail snobs who can afford to stand on principles. Wal-Mart's key demographic, people who are living from paycheck to paycheck, has recently grown by leaps and bounds, and the retailer is meeting its new customers with open arms.

This one's still in rumor mode right now, but even all the experts say it's nearly a sure thing: TheStreet.com, says that AT&T is probably going to cut the price of the monthly iPhone usage plan by $10 this summer as Apple wheels out the phone's new model. That means the current, insultingly off-putting $69-a-month rate (combining the phone plan with data usage) will become a more moderately offensive $59 a month, which is a 14% price drop.

Space that $10-a-month savings over the lifetime of a two-year contract, and users will be saving $240, which is more than the $199 price of the most "basic" (hardly the word) iPhone. If customers can start thinking of the subscription price cut as paying for the device itself, lots more iPhones stand to get sold. Just ask early adopters of the iPhone, who paid $400 for their units, how they feel about the fact you can get one for half that now. Also ask Apple, which saw sales leap from 4 million to 17 million in one year after that price drop went into effect.

In a perfect free-market world, the price of products is not sticky. It fluctuates with the same rapidity as the change in demand. It shouldn't come as a surprise, then, that Apple is about to free its cash cow, iTunes downloads, from the 99 cent price point. Starting April 7th, according to the Los Angeles Times, you could be paying up to $1.29 for tunes from Spoon's Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, and (theoretically) less than 99 cents for tracks of unpopular music. On the bright side, the tunes will be free of digital rights management handcuffs.

The open question is what algorithm Apple will use to set the price, and how quickly the price will change. It could simply monitor download requests and raise the price on the fly for those songs that are most popular. However, this could work to its disadvantage. In psychology, we were taught that a partial reinforcement schedule is the hardest to break. That is, sometimes when we press the bar, we receive a treat; sometimes not. If we always get the high price from iTunes, we might walk away. If we sometimes get the low price, we remain hooked.

As long as Apple has the best selection, the easiest downloads, and the most dedicated devices, it can continue to milk iTunes. The higher the download price, however, the more likely it is that competition will eat into its market. Will $1.29 fall within the law of diminishing returns?

They're so ubiquitous now, a little more than seven years later, that it's hard to remember just how revolutionary the iPod was.

Portable music had existed as long as the cassette tape, and compact discs had been in wide use for some 20 years. But those were cumbersome, couldn't be bumped around, and required users to constantly flip or change cassettes or disc. Cell phones had mushroomed just three years before. Portable music was ripe for its own revolution, and as Edison proved, necessity is often the seed of great fruit. A little over a month after 9/11, in October 2001, Apple announced its first iPod.

At first, media critics scoffed at the luxury price tag of $400. And, yes, that was a lot, but as we soon discovered, the price would come down. The ability to be able to carry around all your music on something the size of a deck of cards proved irresistible. Apple soon unleashed a torrent of cheaper, smaller, more powerful versions, and by 2007, the Nano, a flash version of the original, was Apple's biggest seller, and the average price on an iPod was $161.

There were some MP3-playing antecedents on the market. Every game-changing product has its early rumblings. But many of them were, quite frankly, ugly, and their designs were often cluttered with buttons and navigational menus that only a techie could love. The iPod, though, was pretty. It was easy to use (even though that spinning scroll wheel on the first model was, thankfully, replaced by a pad that sensed your finger's touch). There was something classical about it from the very start.

Many a time I have stood over my kitchen sink, trying to peel little oval stickers off a pear or a sweet red pepper, silently cursing whoever it was that invented the produce identifiers.

Well, now I feel just horribly, because Tom Mathison, founder of Stemilt Growers and the first man to use produce stickers on a commercial scale, died December 26 at his home on Stemilt Hill, in Washington. In addition to instigating the widespread use of little stickers -- which were actually a really smart marketing strategy as well as being useful to grocers -- he believed in paying his growers a sustainable price for their fruit, and he began experimenting with organic growing systems long before anyone else was considering them. Other growers call him an "icon" with "caring" and "passion," telling the story of the year he only made $89 in profit (before growing his 35-acre farm to an operation that shipped more than 20 million boxes of apples, pears and cherries each year) and say that he was looking after the cherry crops to the very end.

I'll take a different view of those little stickers and think about Mathison next time I peel one off over my kitchen sink.