A friend of mine let me know last night that Australian Apple customers were also emailed about a Black Friday sale. To my knowledge, this is the first time Australia has been included in Apple’s Black Friday sales, in part because Black Friday isn’t a thing in Aussieland. As with other markets getting this sale, the Apple.com/au site has a landing page featuring an Apple Watch, with the message that, “Friday can’t come soon enough.” I’m noting this because it shows a push by Apple to make a splash with this sale. As I said, Black Friday isn’t a thing Down Under. Not only is there no “Thanksgiving” holiday weekend happening (there is a “Thanksgiving” celebration unrelated to our Pilgrims, of course), but holiday shopping has a more general ramp up than it does in the States. That said, American culture pushes out to many corners of the world, and the idea of “Black Friday” as a time for sales isn’t unheard of. It’s merely uncommon. Jeff Gamet and I discussed this on Wednesday’s Apple Context Machine. It’s possible that Apple is feeling the need to goose December quarter sales.

SwitchEasy has a new case for iPhone aimed particularly at Jet Black iPhone 7 owners who want to show off that Jet Black finish and have a case, too. The case is called Glass, and the back is made out of hardened glass (7H on the Mohs’ scale of hardness). The company says it has 90% optical transparency, and it was designed with a 1mm gap between the phone and the back of the Glass. That’s to minimize contact with the case to preserve that Jet Black finish. It has a retail price of $39.99.

Apple’s new coffee table book showing the history of its products in photographs is a beautiful representation of the company’s designs. Most of those products, it turns out, are in Stephen Hackett from 512 Pixels personal collections, so he put together a video showing his collection along side Apple’s photos. It’s cool to see the original iPod and iPhone, G4 Cube, iBook, next to their photos. It’s also proof Apple sold at least one set of iPod socks. You can check out Stephen’s video on YouTube.

Peter Cohen has penned a fabulous “History of Hard Drives” for BackBlaze. He walks us through the earliest days of mainframe-related storage to today’s SSDs, with lots of historic photos to illustrate the timeline. I love lore of all sorts—particularly computer-related lore—and I gobbled up this post. That said,  I don’t often link to company blog posts as a Cool Stuff Found, but Peter talks about his employer very little—the focus is the history. If you’re a nerd, it’s a great read.

Apple new coffee table book: Designed by Apple in California comes in two sizes, 13-inch at US$199 and 16-inch at $299, and both contain some 450 photographs of Apple products that look back over the years. What’s not to like? Still, these days, Apple’s self-conscious celebration of its past does open it up to some playful parody. Watch this glorious send up of the Apple book by the Late Show. All in good fun, of course.

Apple rolled out a new commercial for MacBook Pro with Touch Bar called Bulbs. The 1 minute, 37 second spot features flashes of some big (and small) inventions using exploding lightbulbs as a metaphor. In fact, MacBook Pro doesn’t appear until the final 10 seconds, accompanied by the tag line, “Introducing a tool for all the ideas to come.” We’re then shown a finger sliding back and forth on the Touch Bar to scrub through a video of another exploding lightbulb. The imagery is compelling, and seems likely to catch people’s attention, with the Apple message pounding home at the end. It’s one of my favorite spots in recent months.

Bare Feats writes: “Both with the best processor, 16 GB of RAM, 1 TB flash storage, but different GPU. Is the 15-inch with Quad-Core processor and discrete GPU really that much faster? Is it worth the extra $$$, size, and weight?” Their test results show that for “21% more, the extra $$$ buys you a bigger screen, an average of 40% faster performance running CPU intensive pro apps, and an average of 110% faster running GPU intensive pro apps.” Quad-Core and discrete graphics always wins. But if you had any doubts, check out these performance tests.

Chuck Joiner interviewed me on MacVoices a few days ago, and the video went up today. According to him, we talked about Mac refreshes, Tim Cook as Apple CEO, and “touching things.” Now, to be honest, I don’t remember that last bit, but I’m sure it’s somehow Mac related. Right? In any event, it was a fun discussion, and I hope you enjoy it.

There’s an ambition product on Kickstarter called Mahri. It’s a case for iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus (with versions for iPhone 6/6s and 6 Plus/6s Plus). It features two Lightning ports for charging and using headphones. It also has a slim battery with an extra 100% capacity, and it will charge wirelessly. Which, really, seems like overkill with the two Lightning ports, but hey, let’s do it all! The two Lightning ports are handled through circuitry embedded in the case. Wireless charging is done through a Qi charger (not included). There’s a goofy (fun) video on the product page, as well as details about the product. The company is looking to raise $36,000 to manufacture this device—they’ve raised $3,000 in a couple of days with 35 days left to go. $100 funding options that net a case are still available as of this writing.

Remember that jetpack video I showed you a couple of months ago? The people who made that jetpack—JetPack Aviation—are running a contest where you could win a jetpack test flight. 😍 We aren’t involved in this contest, but come on, jetpack! The winner gets a test flight in Los Angeles with the JetPack Aviation JB-10, dinner with the founders, and $1,000 in travel vouchers. If you win, you gotta tell us all about it. Below is a video of some demo flights the company did in New York City.

Extraterrestrials arrive. They don’t appear hostile, but the DoD has no idea what they want or how to communicate with them. That’s the premise behind the intelligent, highly praised movie Arrival. Amy Adams plays an expert linguist who’s called upon to assist with communication with the visitors.  In this interview, Dr. Kiki Sanford (who was recently on TMO’s Background Mode), chats with the actual linguist/consultant to the movie, Dr. Jessica Coon, an associate professor in the Department of Linguistics at McGill University. You’ll want to see the movie, and this interview sets the stage.

Check this out: Apple has apparently added some intelligent storage management to the iOS update process. Mac Geek Gab listener Paul sent in this screenshot of his 16GB iPhone upgrading from iOS 10.1 to iOS 10.1.1. It’s a message telling him that he doesn’t have enough room to run the update. Once upon a time, he’d have been on his own to do something about that. But, iOS is offering to delete Excel from his iPhone, run the iOS update, and then reinstall Excel for him. All automatically. That is seriously cool. [Update: David Nelson pointed me to an article at MacRumors showing this feature was introduced in iOS 9. I missed it back then, and I’m guessing others did, too. One way or another, I like it.]

Until October 14, 1947, no human had piloted an aircraft faster than the speed of sound in level flight. At the time, some believed that it was a true barrier, hence the name, making it technically impossible. Others thought it might be possible, but aerodynamic forces would quickly break up the aircraft. And then, Chuck Yeager proved them wrong in the rocket propelled Bell X-1 on that glorious October day. (Jet engines were not yet powerful enough.) We learned a lot about supersonic flight in the coming years: the “area rule” concept, the advantages of a swept wing, and the all-flying tail. Here’s a very cool story of how it all happened by Popular Mechanics, a reprint from a 40th anniversary article. (Image credit: NASA)

Are you ready to go to Mars? Alyssa Carson, 15, is, She’s just the right age, born into the Mars generation. She’s completely focused and has already started training for the mission. She’s been to every NASA Space Camp, obtained her scuba diving license, is taking college college level courses in high school, and speaks four languages. This video introduces us to a young woman with so much drive and talent, she’ll probably be the first human being to walk on the Red Planet.

App Camp For Girls spends a week teaching 8th and 9th grade girls about iOS development. First, teams spend time in Xcode, building a quiz app. Then at the end of the week, each team presents a pitch for their app to a panel of investors. Then at the end of each summer, all the all the quizzes built in all the sessions are compiled into a Quiz Compendium. It’s up to each team to choose a quiz topic, and the door is wide open as far as subjects. This year’s quizzes include “Who Are You in a Cliched Young Adult Novel?” and “What Fruit Are You Most Like?” as two of the 18 in the app. Now that it’s available, pick up the 2016 Compendium for 99 cents, and all sales go to App Camp. (Full Disclosure: Kelly is one of the original App Camp For Girls volunteers.)

I get giddy when Feral Interactive releases new information about ROME: Total War for iPad. On Monday, the company set the release date for November 10th, meaning Squeeeeeeeeeee! Oh, and there’s a new video, a playing the game on the iPad video. Man, does it look great! ROME: Total War has been a big franchise on Windows and Mac for a long time, and I can’t wait to play it on iPad. It’s $9.99, and it will be here Thursday.

Horace Dediu has penned a piece on computers, mobile devices, touch input, and convergence that is a simply put, a must-read. Centered around Apple’s new MacBook Pro and Touch Bar, Mr. Dediu defines the difference between the Mac and Windows platforms as it pertains to the ways they are evolving. I don’t want to rewrite his piece, so I’ll just leave you with this passage and encourage you to read the whole thing: “Which brings me to the question of what it is allowed to be and hence what it is. It cannot take on the role of being the future. That belongs to the touch screen devices. It will not morph into a touch device any more than a teen’s parent will become cool by putting on skinny jeans. What it will do is become better at what it is hired to do.”

Macphun thinks photo editing and enhancement tools should fit your needs instead of forcing you to bend to their will. That’s the idea behind Luminar—Macphun’s new Mac-based image editing app. Luminar is loaded with pro-level photo adjusting tools designed to make your images look great, but instead of locking you into an interface that’s too simple or too complex for your needs, it’s designed to show you what you want based on your skill level and editing style. Luminar is available for pre-order today through November 17th for US$59, or $49 if you already own another Macphun product. It’ll settle into its regular $69 price when it ships on the 17th.

Elgato just expanded its HomeKit smarthome offerings with its new Eve Motion. The Eve Motion is a motion sensor you can use to trigger HomeKit scenes, like turning on lights when someone enters a room. It has a 29.5-foot range, is splash-proof so you can use it outdoors in areas that are protected from direct rain, and runs for about a year on two AA batteries. Eve Motion is a Bluetooth-only device, so you’ll need a third or fourth generation Apple TV for remote access and control. Amazon is taking orders now at US$49.95 each, and it’ll ship on November 9th.

We know a lot of people were waiting for Apple to launch new MacBook Pros before buying one. What we’d like to know, though, is if that includes you, which machine did you actually buy? Tell us in the Twitter survey we’re running.

If you were waiting until after Apple’s announcement to buy a new Mac laptop, which did you buy?

— The Mac Observer (@MacObserver) November 3, 2016

On Monday morning Apple pushed out iOS 10.1.1 via Software Update. The release notes are short and sweet:

This update fixes bugs including an issue where Health data could not be viewed for some users.

Check Settings > General > Software Update on your iPhone or iPad to download.

Apple launched its first commercial for the new MacBook Pro with Touch Bar. It’s big on splashy colors with brief glimpses of the Touch Bar itself, the company’s new touch-sensitive, context-aware Retina Display tool bar.

Duet Display was already a great app for using your iPad Pro as a second display for your Mac, and now its latest update makes it a proper graphics tablet, too. The new version supports Apple Pencil angle and pressure sensitivity, so you can draw in apps like Adobe Photoshop without having to invest in Wacom’s Cintiq tablet. You can use Duet with other iPad models, too, but you won’t get Apple Pencil drawing support. Duet Display cost US$19.99 a year, but is temporarily available for $9.99, so grab your copy now.