Apple generally tends to merely dip its Designed in California toe into the Black Friday blackwaters, usually offering a one-day $100-off promotion on a single product family via online and in-store purchases. But analysts at Barclay Capital and the folks at Apple Insider are projecting bigger things this year, which could include more aggressive one-time prices slashes across multiple families (iPhone potentially included).

The evidence seems to be in line: Apple Insider points at Apple’s crazy-aggressive (for Apple) back-to-school promotion this year that offered a free iPod touch ($300 value) with a new notebook purchase (over previous years’ Nanos), and a general feeling in the air that Black Friday is going to be batshit crazy this year across the board. Also cited is Orange’s plan to slash iPhone prices by €50 for Noël in France—but take that with a bit more skepticism, because the international carriers have more lee-way over their localized pricing. So is this just stating the obvious? We shall see what happens. [Apple Insider]

Source:Analyst: Apple Getting Crazy With Huge Deals This Black Friday? [Future Dealzmodo?]

The HTC Max 4G is not only pretty, light, and refreshingly sharp. It’s also the world’s first integrated GSM/WiMAX cellphone, which means this thing can zoom at an iPhone-obliterating speed of 70 Mb/sec symmetric. It also means that, if you want one, you will have to move to Russia to get it. For now, it will be only available there in the Yota WiMAX network.

HTC MAX 4G specifications

Processor: Qualcomm® ESM7206A™ 528 MHz
Platform: Windows Mobile® 6.1 Professional
Memory: ROM: 256MB / RAM: 288MB / Flash: 8 GB
Dimensions: 113.5mm X 63.1mm X 13.9mm
Weight: 151 grams (with battery)
Display: 3.8-inch TFT-LCD flat touch-sensitive screen with 480 x 800 WVGA resolution
Network: Tri-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE:900/1800/1900 MHz, Yota Mobile WiMAX 2,5-2.7 GHz
Device Control: TouchFLOâ„¢ 3D
GPS: Inbuilt GPS
Connections:VoIP, Wi-Fi®: IEEE 802.11 b/g ,Bluetooth® 2.0 with EDR, HTC ExtUSB™
Main camera: High-resolution with autofocus
Second: VGA-camera
Additional:Motion G-sensor (automatically rotating picture), Proximity sensor (saving energy while talking due to the switching the display off), FM-radio
Audio: Ring tone formats: AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, AMR-NB, AMR-WB, QCP, MP3, WMA, WAV, 40 polyphonic and standard MIDI format 0 and 1 (SMF)/SP MIDI
Battery: Li-Pol, 1500 mAh
Talk time: GSM: up to 420 minutes, VoIP: up to 230 minutes
Standby time: GSM: up to 350 hours, VoIP: up to 50 hours

The design is good, and the feature set and connectivity are impressive, even if the demo video in Russian is more painful than watching the QVC channel while having a colonoscopy. [Yota]

Source:HTC Max 4G Is World's First GSM/WiMAX Cellphone, Ups iPhone One G [Cellphones]