Apple : Siri is not anti-abortion, says Apple

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• Siri is not anti-abortion, says Apple
• BBC Global iPlayer app comes to Canada
• Buying Guide: Best iPhone sat nav: 5 apps on test
• Apple iPad 3 and iPhone 5 set for 4G data
• Microsoft Office coming to iPad, says report
• iOS 5.1 beta reveals proof of new iPhone, iPad and Apple TV
• iPhone 4 spontaneously combusts on flight
• Sony and Hitachi producing 4-inch iPhone 5 displays?
• Apple's 2012 MacBook Air refresh to include 15-inch model?
• What Laptop 2011 award winners announced
• Buying Guide: Best image editing apps from the Mac App Store
• iTunes malware blights Black Friday spend-fest
• Samsung mocks iPhone 4S buyers in new commercial

Siri is not anti-abortion, says Apple Posted: Apple has released a statement defending its Siri personal assistant app, after pro-choice activists claimed the service was deliberately anti-abortion. The bizarre claims came after some iPhone 4S users asked Siri how they could find the nearest abortion clinic. The service replied that it did not know of any abortion clinics and often offered directions to pregnancy advice centres as an alternative. That prompted a predictable outrage from women's rights groups and bloggers in the US who accused accuse Apple of being anti-abortion and demanding that the tech giant update Siri. Unintentional omission Apple spokesperson Natalie Kerris said that the omission was not intentional and Siri will continue to learn as it moves from Beta to final product. "Our customers want to use Siri to find out all types of information, and while it can find a lot, it doesn't always find what you want," she said. "These are not intentional omissions meant to offend anyone, it simply means that as we bring Siri from beta to a final product, we find places where we can do better and we will in the coming weeks." Abortion might be a big political issue across the pond, but come on, guys? Seriously?

BBC Global iPlayer app comes to Canada Posted: British ex-pats in maple leaf country rejoice! BBC Worldwide has continued the global roll-out of the iPlayer by making it available to iPad users in Canada. The monthly subscription service for Apple's tablet brings a host of new and classic programming for a monthly fee of $8.99 (CAD). The app, which was pushed out to Europe in July this year, allows viewers to watch shows like Top Gear, Dr Who and EastEnders over Wi-Fi and 3G and download content to watch offline. The service differs from the UK offering, which brings you virtually everything shown on TV and Radio, acting more like a best of the Beeb with next content added into the mix. Next stop America? With Europeans, Canadians and Aussies all covered for their weekly fix of Panorama, next in-line for the roll-out is likely to be the United States. The Global iPlayer roll-out is part of a 12-month trial of the service as BBC looks to monetise its prized content on foreign soil. Auntie has decided to exclusively offer the service through an Apple iPad app, rather than offer the traditional desktop client, in the various territories.

Buying Guide: Best iPhone sat nav: 5 apps on test Posted: Best iPhone sat nav app: 5 tested The iPhone is a perfect sat-nav device. Small enough to sit discreetly on your dashboard, but big enough that you can glance – rather than squint – at it, all you need now is the perfect app to use with it. A quick search of the App Store will show you there's lots of choice, from free ones to apps costing over £50. So we've picked four of the big players: TomTom, Garmin, CoPilot and Sygic, as well as one cheap alternative: Navmii GPS Live UK. When you're choosing an app, think about where in the world you're likely to use it, and buy the correct version. And remember that while you don't need an internet connection to use these, since the maps are stored on your phone, you will need it for live traffic information. If you've ever had a car with a built-in sat-nav, the experience of using the iPhone is somewhat different. The main change is that with a built-in sat-nav you've got physical buttons and dials to control it. This means you can, for example, zoom in or out of the map while you're driving, without taking your eyes off the road. There's no doing that with the iPhone, however, because your screen's a single flat surface. You really need to set it up while you're stopped, then put it in the mount and leave it to do its thing as you drive. With the iPhone, you're pretty safe to save your 'Home' location, since you're not going to be leaving your iPhone in the car, and because you can pop a passcode on your phone to keep its contents safe. One thing to make sure of is that when you reach your destination and exit the satnav app, it stops using Location Services. If the compass arrow remains in the top bar, it's still accessing your location and will run the battery down. Go into the app and tell it to stop navigating, or, from the Home screen, double-tap Home, tap and hold the icons to make them wiggle, then tap the minus sign on the sat-nav. How we tested You need a sat-nav to be there to help you in the most confusing and tricky places to find your way around, so what better place to test them than our home town, Bath? Full of one-way streets and bus-only roads, as well as some streets that were redesigned in the last few years as part of a major building project, it presents a real acid test for any sat-nav app. We started our test at home, up on the northern slopes of the city, and asked each app to take us to a local point of interest – in this case, a petrol station on the edge of the city centre. From there, we wanted to visit a friend whose address (but not the postcode) was saved in our iPhone's Contacts list. After that, we tried a straight postcode lookup to take us to a local National Trust property, Prior Park Landscape Garden. Once we'd looked around there, we made our way towards the main railway station, and then back home. This route was specifically designed to test the different ways of setting your destination, as well as the app's knowledge of prohibited roads. There were two such roads in the test, one of which, the Ambury, allows cars for loading only. While there's no active enforcement of this rule, as good law-abiding citizens we wanted the sat-nav to steer us away from it anyway. The second forbidden road was the bus gate at the top of the High Street, which has an enforcement camera on it. Despite this, several of the apps still tried to send us through it, which would have resulted in a hefty fine had we followed the routing. In both cases, we followed the suggested route as far as possible (shown as dotted lines in our maps) and then turned off, to test the apps' ability to reroute us. Obviously, the apps' routing accuracy will vary in different places throughout the country; this is just an example. 1. CoPilot Live Premium UK & Ireland - £29.99 A premium offering, but not a premium price point Despite its Premium name, this is one of the more affordable apps on test here. Though its interface, doesn't look particularly iOS-like, it's simple enough to find your way around. But as you make your way through the menus, it lacks some of the polish and smoothness of the TomTom or Garmin apps. Scrolling's a little jerky and there's sometimes a delay before menus appear. These are minor gripes, but it's things like this that set the great apps apart from the ones that are merely good. The display when you're driving looks pretty, though the fonts used are a tad on the slim side for glancing at when you're driving. Some braver, chunkier bolding wouldn't have gone amiss. Similarly, the so-called Driving Menu, which gives you access to various on-route options, has nice, big, easy-to-press buttons, marked with big, clear symbols, but the font on the labels is too small to read without peering in closely. Having got all that off our chest, there's a lot here we do like. When you're stationary, for example, it adds local points of interest to the map. But, knowing this adds clutter, these vanish again as soon as you pull away. The spoken instructions during our test were a mixed bag. The ones it gave us in advance of a junction or lane change were inferior to both TomTom and Sygic, but we found the 'now' directions ('turn left now') were given at the perfect time. The voice giving the instructions, like on all the apps except Sygic's, was a little mechanical, especially when pronouncing road names. And this was the only app other than TomTom that, as far as we could tell, made use of the GPS in the TomTom Car Kit, meaning that it should work on an iPod touch as well, but check this before you buy. The live traffic updates cost a bargain £8.99 for a year's subscription, and show up at the side of the screen. Verdict: 3/5 2. Garmin UK & Ireland - £39.99 Can the new kid in town give the rest a run for their money? Garmin is no stranger to the world of satnavs, but it's the new kid on the block when it comes to the iPhone, the app having been out for a matter of weeks when we tested it, and still at version 1.0. We love the simplicity of the main menu: two big buttons, with some smaller ones down the side. It's easy to find your way around the app and to navigate to different types of waypoint. The interface looks very similar to what you get with Garmin's own brand sat-nav units, so if you've used one of them, this'll be second nature to you. But even if you haven't, it's quick to learn and feels remarkably slick considering it's the first version of the app. Though the map itself can be cluttered, the main interface is, happily, nice and simple. A big instruction, your estimated time of arrival, a prominently displayed speed limit, your own speed (which turns red if you're going too fast), and a traffic button are all you get, and it's absolutely great. The route you need to follow is marked in bright pink, so it's easy to tell apart from the surrounding roads, and there's a quick-access button to the live traffic information, if you've subscribed. This'll cost you £2.99 a month or £21.99 for an annual pass, and the app automatically routes you away from traffic it detects. It also zooms in and out of the route when it feels this is useful. We commend Garmin for including lane guidance in towns and cities, rather than just on motorway junctions. It wasn't always perfect, and was a little bit small, but it's a useful addition. The same could be said for the speed camera warning, which plays a sound and pops up on the screen, though the writing is too small to read from a distance. In time, we learned what this combination of sound and a grey blob on the screen meant, but a simpler and larger camera symbol would work better, we feel. The guidance voice could also do with some work, but this is an excellent offering nonetheless. Verdict: 4/5 3. Sygic UK & Ireland - £17.49 Not keen on spending too much? Then try this for size… At less than half the cost of some of the others here, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Sygic's app might be found wanting in comparison to those with heftier prices. But it impressed us on multiple fronts, starting with the menus you use to tell it where you'd like to go. The buttons are big, making them easy to press, and they feel polished. This wasn't the only area where Sygic impressed us, though. The default voice that reads out instructions is by far the most natural-sounding of all the apps. Using it was more like having a friend in the passenger seat telling you where to go, rather than a mechanical-sounding robot. The instructions that the voice gave us were impressive too, especially the 'keep left/keep right' lane guidance. Our test route contained lots of two- and three-lane roads, and sometimes knowing which to be in is baffling, even for those of us who have been driving in Bath for some years. Yet the lane guidance, with one or two small exceptions, pointed us to the lanes that our experience would have led us to choose. The on-screen map that you see when you're driving is kept minimalist, which we also liked: it's easy to find the particular bit of information you're after, and the speed limit is always prominently visible. If you subscribe to the live traffic information from INRIX (€9.99 per year for the UK), you get a little symbol in the other corner of the screen, telling you if there are any delays on your route. We'd have liked this to be bigger, but it's simple to get at. It wasn't all good news, though. Our biggest complaint was that the colouring of the map at times made it tricky to pick out your route from all the surrounding roads. We'd have liked to see more contrasting colours used here. The on-screen lane guidance is too small as well. And when we were trying to navigate to a contact's address, it listed our entire address book, rather than just those with addresses available. It also threw a strop when we put in a postcode with a space in the middle. Hmph. Verdict: 3/5 4. TomTom UK & Ireland - £49.99 How does the sat-nav veteran stand up to the competition? TomTom's been doing the sat-nav thing for so long that it's almost become the de facto choice for navigation: you want a sat-nav, you get a TomTom. And as you use its iPhone app, you can tell it's a carefully refined piece of work. Feeling very at home on iOS, it uses big chunky fonts that are easy to read, even when you can only glance at the screen quickly. These permeate throughout the menus as well as the driving screen. The menus you use to tell it where to go are logically arranged and extremely smooth to use. The driving display is easy to read and uncluttered, with a good contrast between the directed route and surrounding roads. One thing we were less keen on was the way the name of the road you're currently on is displayed directly above the instruction arrow at the bottom, while the road you're looking for next is on its own at the top. It would make more sense to swap them round, so that a single glance would tell you you're looking for, say, a left turn onto Lower Mortlake Road, rather than needing to look at the bottom of the screen for the first part, then the top for the second. The voice is one of the better ones among the apps we tried. Though it's not as natural-sounding as Sygic's, it does a reasonably good job with road names and giving instructions. Live traffic information comes from TomTom's sophisticated system that anonymously tracks the speed of vehicles with TomTom devices on board, and combines this with information from other sources. It also incorporates historical traffic data, so if a particular road is always slow at rush hour, it takes this into account, too. If there's traffic ahead, it looks for a quicker alternative and informs you if it's found one. A month of use costs £3.99, while a year is £26.99. There are similarly priced options for speed cameras. And provided you use a TomTom Car Kit for the iPod touch, the app will work with this device, too. Verdict: 4/5 5. Navmii GPS Live UK - £2.99 Just how good a sat-nav can you get for a few quid? One of the main reasons sat-nav apps aren't cheap is because of the map data that's required to power them. Companies spend a lot of money developing their maps, and you as the consumer pay for this. Navmii is different, because it uses OpenStreetMap, a free map of the world that's been made by people like you – the Wikipedia of maps, if you will. So although it's not perfect, if you do find a mistake, you can correct it yourself. And because it's so cheap, we can cut it some slack for its shortcomings as an app. It's missing a lot of the features that are standard in the others, such as contact lookup and some point of interest searches. We like the way its main menu is made up of big, chunky buttons, but the ease of use is spoiled somewhat by the tiny font beneath them. If you're going to be relying on a sat-nav a lot, we'd recommend one of the others, but if you only need it now and again, you could do a lot worse than to try Navmii's app. Verdict: 3/5 And the winner is… TomTom UK & Ireland - £49.99 For navigation panache, you can't get better than this Having spent considerable time testing each of these, our conclusion is that if we were to jack in the day job and devote ourselves to crafting the perfect sat-nav app, we'd take elements from each one of these. From Sygic UK & Ireland, we'd want that incredibly natural-sounding voice and quality lane guidance, while CoPilot Live Premium chose the best route in our test. Navmii, given it's so cheap in comparison to the big boys, does a remarkably good job, too. And Garmin's first attempt at an iOS app is impressive; in a few updates' time, we can see it giving TomTom a real run for its money, particularly given its lower price point. But at the moment, TomTom's is the best iOS satnav app there is, because it's just so easy to use on an iPhone. The style and organisation of its menus make it simple to get to grips with. Options are where you'd expect them to be, while the buttons and fonts are large and bold enough to make them easy to read at a glance, without needing to peer in too closely – something that can't be said for all the apps here, by any means. It isn't perfect – the routing around Bath wasn't ideal – and it's the most expensive one we tested. But having said that, we feel it's a price definitely worth paying for a slickness and polish that we've come to expect from good iOS apps, and its currently unrivalled among its peers. If you're going to be using a sat-nav a lot, go with TomTom, and get a traffic subscription. You won't regret it.

Apple iPad 3 and iPhone 5 set for 4G data Posted: The next generation iPad 3 and iPhone 5 handsets will boast 4G LTE connectivity for the first time, according to reports emanating from Japan. The trusted Nikkei Business publication believes that Apple CEO Tim Cook has already met with Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo in Cupertino to discuss the plans. Nikkei says that the two companies have reached a deal to bring a 4G LTE iPad 3 to the land of the rising sun next summer and an iPhone 5 next autumn. Of course, any Apple 4G launches would likely to roll-out in the United States, although it is highly unlikely that the UK's own infrastructure will be up and running in time. Long time coming Apple is one of the last remaining manufacturers yet to embrace 4G technology with Motorola, HTC and Samsung handsets all toting next generation internet speeds. The iPhone 4S hasn't been a runaway success following a recent launch in South Korea largely due to the lack of 4G connectivity. iPhone 4G rumours have been doing the rounds for a while now, but Nikkei has a great record with its predictions so this particular report deserves a little more credence.

Microsoft Office coming to iPad, says report Posted: Microsoft is 'actively working' on bringing its Office suite of apps to Apple's iPad, according to a report from The Daily. The iPad-only newspaper says a string of updates are on the way, which include Office for iPad, a new version for Mac OS X Lion and Office 2012 for Windows 8, which is currently in Beta form. However, it's an adaptation for Apple's tablet that'll really make the headlines, with the Daily predicting the cost of Word, Excel and Powerpoint will be 'significantly lower' than the full version of Office. Apple's iWork suite, which includes apps like Pages, Keynote and Numbers, have proved popular and Microsoft's offering is set to be around the same £6.99 standalone pricepoint. Office 365 compatible The Daily's report claims that the iPad suite will also be compitable with the Office 365 cloud solution. According to the article, Office for Windows 8 and Office for OS X Lion will arrive near the end of 2012, but Office for iPad will be on the scene a little sooner.

iOS 5.1 beta reveals proof of new iPhone, iPad and Apple TV Posted: The beta version iOS 5.1 has been released to developers and there are a number of references to apparent new hardware in the code. It's been a matter of minutes since the last iPhone 5 and iPad 3 rumour appeared, so we thought it only fitting to wildly speculate that the beta code for iOS 5.1 houses myriad hints that new Apple hardware is indeed in the works. First up is reference to the iPhone 5,1 – which seems to be the internal name for the new iPhone. The code comes just after the iPhone 4,1, which is the internal code for the iPhone 4S. The jump to 5 means that there will probably be significant hardware changes to the phone, including the likes of a new processor and a new screen. brightcove : 1212903245001 New iPad A new iPad is also referenced and has been given the moniker iPad 2,4. As this is a jump in number it is thought that this wouldn't be a massive upgrade but could well be a 3G-only version of the iPad that is soon to be released in the US by telco Sprint. Finally, a new version of Apple TV is referenced and has been given the codename J33. Rumour has it that this could be the 1080p-toting Apple TV which is said to be in the works.

iPhone 4 spontaneously combusts on flight Posted: Concerns about the safety of some Apple devices have arisen again after a passenger's iPhone 4 spontaneously combusted on a flight in Australia. According to airline Regional Express the device began to glow red and emit smoke during landing and had to be extinguished when the plane hit the runway. A statement said: "Regional Express (Rex) flight ZL319 operating from Lismore to Sydney today had an occurrence after landing, when a passenger's mobile phone started emitting a significant amount of dense smoke accompanied by a red glow. "In accordance with company standard safety procedures, the Flight Attendant carried out recovery actions immediately and the red glow was extinguished successfully." No-one harmed The airline said that no members of the crew or cabin were harmed, but as you can see from the photo, the iPhone in question is well and truly done-for. This isn't the first time that Apple devices have been known to go up in smoke. Back in 2009, Apple blamed users for exploding and overheating iPhones, while iPod devices have also been known to experience the odd overheating problem.

Sony and Hitachi producing 4-inch iPhone 5 displays? Posted: Apple has reportedly teamed up with Japanese tech titans Sony and Hitachi to produce 4-inch displays for a new iOS device, presumably the iPhone 5, set to be released in 2012. Japanese Apple news site macotakara.jp reckons that the two companies have already shipped the new LCD screens to Cupertino. If the reports are true, it would be another step towards confirming that the next generation iPhone will have the 4-inch display many users hoped would arrive with the iPhone 4S. Sharing the load AppleInsider points out that Apple has history of sharing the manufacturing load around multiple partners, with reports last week claiming that Sharp is building a LCD display for the third-gen iPad model. The site claims that Apple has invested a "significant amount" in Sharp's factories to enable them to produce IGZO displays, which will allow the device to be thinner and offer better battery life. Jeffries analyst Peter Misek said: "IGZO technology is perfect in that it offers near-OLED power consumption while having a lower cost and thinness that is only 25% greater than OLED, based on our checks." Meanwhile macotakara.jp also reckons a Taiwanese company (as yet unspecified) is working on LCD screens for Apple for a "fundamentally changed" iPad 4. Of course, all of the above remains unconfirmed and should, at the moment, be considered no more than interesting speculation. Via: AppleInsider (macotakara)

Apple's 2012 MacBook Air refresh to include 15-inch model? Posted: Apple looks set to refresh its MacBook Air line up in early 2012 but the latest rumours suggest it will also add a 15-inch model to the range at the same time. The tip comes from Digitimes, which cites supply chain sources as the foundation for the information. The refresh will see the 11-inch and 13-inch laptops get a bit of an update, with the existing models expected to get a price drop over the coming months in preparation. MacBook Flair Apple's slim Air range has seen increased competition from Intel's Ultrabook project over the course of 2011, with the chip maker's specifications including high performance computing in a slim, stylish package. Digitimes' isn't always the most reliable tech outlet, but this isn't the first time we've heard talk of a 15-inch Air with previous rumours suggesting that the notebook was in the final testing stages. The company's MacBook Pro range is also set for an overhaul in 2012, with some rumours suggesting that the Pro design will be brought into line with the Air's idiosyncratic wedge-shape.

What Laptop 2011 award winners announced Posted: This year has been a good year for the humble notebook, shaking a fist at that cheeky young upstart, the tablet. But with so many to choose from how do you sort the best from the rest? Enter the good folk over at What Laptop. As you'd expect, they know a thing or two about laptops, and they've used this notebook know-how to choose the best of the year. So whether you're looking for something for the whole family, on a bit of a budget or after the cream of the crop, the What Laptop 2011 award winners will see you right. Forget the rest As well as the best business laptop, best gaming laptop and best for watching movies, you can also find out which device won the coveted editor's choice award for this year. Got your technological taste-buds a tingling? Just click on through to What Laptop to see the winners in all their glory. And if you're thirsty for more laptop porn, we've got a video of What Laptop's five best notebooks in the world right here for your personal enjoyment: brightcove : 1282353790001

Buying Guide: Best image editing apps from the Mac App Store Posted: Best App Store image editing apps Manage, share and edit your photos with ease with the help of these helpful apps from the Mac App Store... 01. ImageConvert £Free Limit Point This is an app with no frills. No, really, there are NO frills. But then, if all you want to do is convert your photos from one format to another, you probably don't want an interface getting in the way. To convert files you select the Preferences tab, and select the format you'd like to save in (JPG, PSD, TIF, PNG and so on). Then you just drop one image, a number of selected images, or an entire folder on the ImageConvert dialog box. Done! 02. Flare £5.99 Iconfactory Many apps are available that quickly enable you to apply pre-set filters to photos. On first inspection, it's easy to assume that Flare is one such tool, but it offers much more. Using an interface that makes editing photos a pleasure, you can stack multiple filters, add and remove them easily, and also save them as presets. Adjust exposure, contrast, blur, midtones, colour gradient, sharpness, texture, grain, and much more. We love Flare! 03. Sketcher £3.99 Neatberry Creating painterly masterpieces from your photographs has never been easier, thanks to Sketcher. After dragging the photo you'd like to transform into the interface, you're presented with a series of sliders and drop-down menus. First, choose whether you want pencil, watercolour, pastel, oil, paint blend, or watermix. You can then edit the properties of your image, such as brush size and stroke. Finally, choose your media (crumpled paper, canvas and so on) and you're done. It's simple to use, and the results can be mightily impressive. 04. Colorize £1.79 iApe Despite what you might think, the extremely popular practice of selectively adding colour to a monochrome photo is a technique that existed long before digital technology. Unfortunately, it was the devil's own job to achieve. But not any more. Photo manipulators have been using layer masks to achieve this technique for a good few years, but Colorize makes things even easier. Add an image, have it automatically converted to black and white, and then paint over the part of the image you want in colour. 05. CameraBag Desktop £8.99 Nevercenter CameraBag is presented as a 'one-click photo lab', and it's a great way to add an extra level of creativity to even your most uninspiring images. You can apply preset filters, such as mono and colour-cross, combine any two filters together, pick from a selection of borders, save presets, and even batch-process entire folders of images. And thanks to the unpredictable nature of film processing, the Reprocess button can make subtle/extreme changes with one click. 06. Aperture 3 £45 Apple If you feel that iPhoto doesn't give you enough oomph, there's another photography tool from Apple that caters to those people looking for a more professional solution: Aperture. Aperture doesn't come cheap, but compared to the likes of Adobe's Photoshop it's a veritable bargain. Building on the ease of use and functionality of iPhoto, Aperture offers enhanced editing controls (such as selective retouching and filters); enables you to create powerful slideshows; stores multiple versions of a photo in the same file (saving space); has masses of library options; and comes with the added bonus of being able to split your library across multiple external drives (for serious snappers!). 07. Flickery £5.99 Eternal Storms Software It's impossible to cover photography apps for the Mac without mentioning this top tool for managing photos on the web's leading online image app, Flickr. Using Flickery, you can easily upload, manage and move your Flickr photos. It's actually worth the cost just to be able to navigate your Flickr images in such an intuitive way, but the added functionality makes it a necessary purchase for any serious Flickr users out there. 08. Light Master £Free Duan Baoping The HDR (high dynamic range) photo technique enables you to get images that really pop, providing more control over the lightest and darkest areas. The purist's approach to HDR is to take multiple images at different exposures and combine them, but the effect can be achieved in-app with just one photo. Suited to landscapes, Light Master takes an image of your choosing, and enables you to use a slider to adjust HDR intensity. 09. iPhoto £8.99 Apple Apple's entry-level organiser for photos is must-have software for anyone starting out with digital photography on the Mac and looking for a way to easily organise and edit files. There's great Facebook and Flickr integration, a number of slideshow tools, and a new full-screen mode in iPhoto '11, all of which make it well worth a look. 10. PhotoSync £Free touchbyte At the time of writing, we're not entirely sure how iCloud is going to affect PhotoSync, but as things stand it's currently the best way to transfer photos from your iPhone or iPad to your Mac, without the need for cables. The PhotoSync Mac app is free, but the companion app on iOS has a small charge. But if the ability to quickly move photos around is important to you, this is a fantastic syncing solution.

iTunes malware blights Black Friday spend-fest Posted: Bargain hunters beware – what may seem like a harmless email from iTunes randomly offering you credit could in fact be delivering a nasty strain of malware. The attached ZIP file allows crims to access your computer, making it child's play for them to nick passwords and other sensitive info you have stored. Eleven Security reckons it's been deliberately timed to coincide with the Black Friday sales - people will be more likely to be shopping online, making credit card details easy pickings for the perpetrators. The good news for Mac users is that it looks like only Windows PCs can suffer the infection and the program, named Mal/BredoZp-B, can be defeated with anti-spyware software. Obvious Those familiar with Apple's ways will no doubt be wary of any email promising free iTunes credit – the company doesn't exactly have a precedent in the freebies department. However, it is offering some discounts for shoppers this Black Friday – you can save £31 on the iPad 2 and £81 off a MacBook or iMac on its UK shopping site.

Samsung mocks iPhone 4S buyers in new commercial Posted: Samsung's latest Galaxy S2 commercial has mercilessly mocked the loyal Apple iPhone fans who recently waited in line for the new 4S smartphone. The ad, which will air in the US on Thanksgiving Thursday, features a host of caricatured iPhone enthusiasts lining-up outside Apple Stores lookalikes, nine hours before it goes on sale. The cutting commercial, which you can watch in the YouTube clip below, portrays the Apple fanboys' excitedly speculating on the new features, before their attention is drawn to an S2 user. "I'm creative" Initially they're impressed by the device's screen screen, but as soon as one of the fanboys discovers that it is a Samsung phone, he sneers: "I could never get a Samsung, I'm creative." His pal, also waiting in line, quips back with "Dude, you're a barista," while the commercial also baits Apple for the lack of 4G mobile broadband and a supposedly inferior and smaller screen. The ad ends by saying: "The next big thing is already here." Apple and Samsung are already embroiled in a smartphone turf war with Apple claiming the range of Galaxy phones and tablets 'blatantly copied' the iPhone and iPad. Commercials portraying Apple enthusiasts as blind lemmings, blinded by Apple's marketing tomfoolery isn't likely to see Apple call of its legal dogs in the near future. The commercial doesn't specifically mention Apple by name, but check out the video below and try not to smirk just a little bit. YouTube : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6h5JSojJN3Y

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