Expercom Debuts Black Friday Sale on High-End Configurations of MacBook Pro and iMac

Apple premium reseller Expercom this week launched a few discounts on high-end build-to-order configurations of the iMac and MacBook Pro. All of these selections include models that have the best sale prices in comparison to the other Apple resellers, and many configurations aren’t on sale anywhere else this week, allowing those planning on making a big purchase to save a bit of money on a new Apple computer this holiday.

Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with some of these vendors. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running.

Below we’ve listed the Macs on sale, along with their price at Expercom and any relevant comparison to the same or similar configurations sold at B&H Photo, Adorama, MacMall, and Apple’s own refurbished online store.

13-inch MacBook Pro

• Late 2016, 2.4GHz i7, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD – $1,499.00 at Expercom

15-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar

• Late 2016, 2.9GHz, 16GB RAM, 2TB SSD – $2,599.00 at Expercom / $3,379.00 at Apple Refurb / $3,799.00 at Adorama / $3,699.00 at MacMall
• Mid 2017, 3.1GHz, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD – $3,099.00 at Expercom / $3,199.00 at B&H / $3,199.00 at Adorama / $3,399.00 at MacMall

27-inch Retina 5K iMac

• Late 2015, 3.2GHz, 8GB RAM, 1TB HD – $1,399.00 at Expercom / $1,439.00 at Apple Refurb / $1,799.00 at Adorama / $1,699.00 at MacMall
• Mid 2017, 4.0Ghz, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD – $1,899.00 at Expercom
• Mid 2017, 4.2Ghz, 32GB RAM, 3TB Fusion Drive – $2,799.00 at Expercom / $3,179.00 at B&H / $3,179.00 at Adorama / $3,199.00 at MacMall

Expercom’s sale includes many more Macs and ends on November 25. For more of the latest savings heading into the holidays, be sure to check out our Black Friday Roundup.

Related Roundup: Apple Black Friday
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Take a deep breath, a sip of wine, and ace Thanksgiving with these apps

Voting, renting a car, hosting your first Thanksgiving — these are all important milestones on a path toward adulthood. But that last one is fraught with responsibility. If you burn dinner on any other night, there is always pizza. If you ruin the turkey, well, it’s the only night of the year when the thought of pizza makes us sad.

But fear not, young chef. There is a lot of help in the form of apps, and voice-activated assistants! From planning what to make or picking out the perfect pumpkin to managing your shopping list and finding the right wine, we offer you some help to help ensure everyone you invite this year will want to come back next Thanksgiving, too.

Out of Milk

With Out of Milk, you can manage your shopping lists for Thanksgiving whether you’re team Google Home or team Amazon Echo. By creating an account and linking it to your preferred voice assistant, your changes will automatically sync to all of your devices. You’re able to add or remove items, specify the quantity, and have multiple running lists — which the voice assistant can switch between. Any lists created or edited through the voice assistant will also sync to the app, for those last minute additions.

Available from:

iOS Android

Oh She Glows

If presentation is extremely important to you this Thanksgiving, Oh She Glows has you covered. With over 95 plant-based recipes, there’s a dish to cater to everyone’s taste-buds. Whether it’s Make-Ahead Thanksgiving Panzanella or Sweet Potato Crumble Casserole, these meals not only sound delicious but look stunning as well. To help make the process easier, the easy-to-use interface allows you to strike out different steps or ingredients as you start cooking, and add your own notes to the recipes if you make any changes while cooking. With an anti-lock feature, you also don’t have to worry about touching your device with dirty hands to unlock your device and find your place again.

Available from:

iOS Android

Food Network In The Kitchen

Food Network’s In the Kitchen app has over 70,000 recipes to choose from for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. But for Thanksgiving specifically, it has its own section dedicated to all the different ways to cook a turkey along with gravy recipes. The app also includes a roundup of its top 50 Thanksgiving recipes to help make sure you have all the classics covered ranging from stuffing to mashed potatoes. To help make it easier, select recipes also include how-to videos from Food Network chefs themselves so you can follow along.

Available from:

iOS Android

Google Assistant

Google Assistant can help you in a variety of ways this Thanksgiving. Not only can it help you create a shopping list for any last minute grocery store trips, but you can also use its timer to help you while cooking. If you’re looking for recipe inspiration, Google Assistant will provide you with a variety of options to choose from by simply asking for Thanksgiving recipes. It will also be there to help you with any last minute cooking questions, especially those confusing measurement conversions. You can do a lot more with Assistant, so check out our guide for more.

Available from:

iOS Android

Yummly

Once you have decided on your basic menu, you can look for interesting takes on your basic green bean casserole. Yummly takes results from all over the Internet, so this search will give you tons of results, but there’s a filter button for a reason. You can omit recipes with ingredients you hate; look by cuisine type; limit by prep time; and indicate whether you prefer something that is spicy, sweet, sour, and so on. If you find something that gets your heart to skip a beat, you can add the ingredients to your Instacart, if you have an account. You will also get nutrition information, which might be useful depending on how you feel about Thanksgiving pants.

Available from:

iTunes Android Microsoft

SideChef

If you really, really don’t know what you’re doing, this app might help. SideChef’s creator, Kevin Yu, has described its target audience as the cooking-for-dummies crew. It has big pictures to go along with each step and videos and tips for certain things. Don’t know how to “slice an orange?” There’s a video to show you the technique. Seriously. But some of its other features are meant to appeal to all sorts of cooks, like voice recognition. It will read the directions aloud, then you can tell it to advance to the next step without smearing giblet juice all over your phone. Its filters aren’t as helpful as Yummly’s, but it can walk you through a challenging recipe pretty thoroughly.

Available from:

iTunes Android

Hello Vino

If the only time you serve wine is at Thanksgiving, then you might need a little help in this department. Even if you are pretty sure poultry pairs with white, Hello Vino can give you even more details — based on whether you’re smoking, roasting, or barbecuing your bird. For example, it recommends chardonnay (even tells you how to pronounce it) and gives some quick tasting notes — though “buttery flavors and vanilla” might not mean much to non-oenophiles. Then it breaks down its picks into “recommended,” “highly rated,” and “$10 and under.” It’s meant as more of a way to order wines, but it gives you a starting place.

The app is supported by ads, and its scanning feature — which lets you take a picture of a wine label to get details about it — costs money, unlike other free apps like Vivino and Delectable. Still, neither of those had as robust food-pairing suggestions. Don’t forget the perfect-with-pumpkin-pie pouilly-fuissé.

Available from:

iTunes Android

Amazon’s Alexa

If you have both an Echo, Dot, or another Alexa-enabled device and a new General Electric oven, you can get your voice-activated assistant to do some of the work for you. With the Geneva skill enabled, you can ask Alexa to turn on your oven when it is turkey time. It might be a bit gimmicky, but your guests will probably be impressed. Alternatively, you can also ask Alexa to order some ingredients last minute from Amazon Pantry.

Available from:

Amazon

Update: Added Oh She Glows, Google Assistant, Food Network In The Kitchen, and Out of Milk 

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Google borrows Apple’s programming language for mysterious Fuchsia OS

An exchange of tweets between the creator of Swift and engineers at Google indicate that the company will be using Apple’s programming language in its new operating system, Fuchsia. Google is using Swift for Fuchsia, but we still don’t know why.

The tweets were spotted first by The Verge, and give us a little bit of insight into what’s happening with the development of Google’s mysterious operating system. They came from Chris Lattner, the creator of Apple’s open-source programming language, who now just so happens to work at Google. Lattner addressed concerns over at GitHub that Google was “forking” Swift.

Swift at Google has enough folks working on it that we need a staging ground/integration point, and we decided it should be public. https://t.co/hyphe0KrU0

— Chris Lattner (@clattner_llvm) November 15, 2017

Shortly after, a developer named Zac Bowling, whose Twitter profile describes him as an “engineer on Fuchsia @Google,” responded to the tweet. The Verge mentions that Bowling was one of the developers who ported Objective-C over to Android years back. Bowling confirms that the use of Swift at Google has indeed been for the development of the new operating system.

And my team is adding support to Swift to target Fuchsia. https://t.co/ziGwc11yih

— Zac Bowling (@zbowling) November 16, 2017

Fuchsia is a new operating system that’s currently in development over at Google. It’s been reported on long enough that we know what it is and what it looks like — you can even test it out yourself. We still don’t have a clue, however, as to what Google plans to use it for. It could be meant to replace Android or Chrome OS … or to bring the two together. Who knows?

It should be noted that Google’s other alternate operative system, Andromeda, was canned altogether earlier this year. Reports indicated that Andromeda was meant to be a GUI that unified the worlds of mobile and desktop operating systems. As things go with Google, it’s no surprise to hear that Google has multiple, secret products in development at the same time — and cancels those projects long before they become official.

Swift is Apple’s proprietary programming language, made for the purpose of making apps for Apple’s various software platforms. Fuchsia is already compatible with Dart, C++, and Go — adding Swift into the mix just means that it will be that much easier for developers to bring apps written in those languages over to Fuchsia.

Google has remained silent about Fuchsia and what even the point of it is. All we know is that the longer Chrome OS and Android remain separated, the more they clash when Google forces them together in products like the Pixelbook.

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Use the Force to protect your iPhone with Otterbox Star Wars cases

Otterbox wants to help protect your phone with the power of the Force, thanks to its latest series of Star Wars-themed iPhone cases: the Symmetry Series Star Wars Collection.

The cases come in a range of different designs, with a number of different Star Wars characters and graphics on them. For example, you could go for the nicely designed graphic of Rey and R2-D2 on Ahch-To, which features the Millennium Falcon in the background, or go for something a little more simple — a red case with the Star Wars logo on the back. Other designs include a graphic of Darth Vader, a stormtrooper, and the adorable BB-8 droid.

The cases themselves are available for the iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone 8, and iPhone 8 Plus — sorry iPhone X users, you’ll have to stick with something else for now. The smaller cases for the iPhone 7 and iPhone 8 come in at $45, while the larger ones, built for the iPhone 7 Plus and iPhone 8 Plus, cost $10 more at $55. That’s a solid chunk of change for a phone case — but the Star Wars branding and the good reputation of Otterbox may make it worth it for many people.

The Otterbox Symmetry Series has been around for some time now, and doesn’t just feature the new Star Wars cases. The series is built to offer a ton of drop protection while still remaining relatively true to your phone’s profile. This is an Otterbox — so don’t expect the most sleek cases out there — but at least you can rest assured that your phone is relatively protected. The already-available Otterbox Symmetry Series offers a pretty massive range of options, and it extends beyond iPhones to include the Samsung Galaxy S7, Galaxy S7 Edge, Galaxy S8, and Galaxy S8 Plus. In keeping with the Disney theme, Otterbox offers Mickey and Minnie Mouse cases, as well as plain cases for those that want something a little more subtle.

You can get the new Otterbox Symmetry Series Star Wars cases for yourself from the Otterbox website. As mentioned, they’ll cost $45 to $55, depending on your iPhone model.

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Three generations of Intel processors are vulnerable to management engine bug

It’s rare that the kids, parents, and grandparents are affected by any one problem, but that’s exactly what’s happened with the case of the recently discovered Management Engine bug in Intel processors. The exploit, which makes it possible for the remote takeover of a system, affects not only the latest, eighth generation of Intel CPUs, but the seventh and sixth generations as well (even the best ones).

But this bug doesn’t stop there. On top of affecting almost all desktop and laptop systems sold with Intel hardware since 2015, Xeon processor lines like the E3-1200 v5 and V6 are affected too. As Ars Technica points out, this bug also hits the Atom range of C3000 processors, the E3900 series for Internet of Things devices, and the Apollo Lake Pentium and Celeron N and J series processors.

The problem in Intel’s Management Engine (ME) firmware actually enables four different potential exploits, with different versions of the ME affected by different ones. The most severe bug was discovered by researchers in the latest version of the firmware; it allows remote code execution, which potentially allows the takeover of an entire system without having access to the hardware.

Other, somewhat less serious exploits, make it possible to cause system crashes or instability, and to access privileged information about the system.

Despite the widespread nature of the bug(s), there isn’t much consumers can do about it as of yet. Intel has released a detection tool to find out if your system is one of those vulnerable to its effects, with options for a command-line interface and a more consumer-friendly general user interface option. Both highlight what hardware and software your system is running and whether you may be vulnerable to this newly discovered flaw.

If you know or suspect you are affected, the best advice Intel is offering, for now, is to keep an eye on your motherboard or system manufacturer’s website and update your drivers and firmware as and when you can. Lenovo is expected to get an update out by November 23. Dell has confirmed that some 100 of its systems are affected by this bug, though it hasn’t given a time frame for when its firmware update will be released.

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Are you going to buy a OnePlus 5T?

The OnePlus 5T is one of the best ways you can spend $500 on a new phone, and as you’d expect, that’s made a lot of people very interested in it.

OnePlus officially made the 5T available for purchase on November 21, and just six hours after the phone’s initial launch, OnePlus reported that the 5T was the company’s fastest selling smartphone to date.

That’s not hard to believe considering just how solid of a phone the 5T is, and with so many people apparently interested in OnePlus’s latest and greatest, we thought it’d be a good idea to check in with our forum users to see if they were among some of the first buyers.

Along with talking about whether or not they ordered the phone, there was also some discussion regarding why they chose to make the upgrade.

Bippoptl
11-21-2017 09:44 AM

“

Got mine at 9am

Reply

ODog2323
11-21-2017 09:49 AM

“

Ordered the 8GB just after 9.

Reply

Morty2264
11-21-2017 09:53 AM

“

Awesome! Congratulations! What are you looking forward to the most about the 5T?

Reply

Bippoptl
11-21-2017 09:56 AM

“

The dash charger! I’ve owned the oneplus 3, 3t, & 5. I watch a lot of video on my phone so I went with the note 8 which has a beautiful screen. But my God, when you are used to the Dash charger nothing else will do. I’m switching back also because they finally have a bigger screen and the facial recognition. Samsungs finger print scanner, iris scanner, and facial scanner are terrible. So right…

Reply

Now, we want to pass the question on to you – Have you bought or will you be buying the OnePlus 5T?

Join the conversation in the forums!

Grab a Huawei Watch 2 for $180, Band 2 Pro for $50, Mate 9 bundle for $399 and more

Whether you need a phone, tablet, or watch, you won’t want to miss this deal!

Is this deal for me?

As part of its Gold Box deals of the day, Amazon currently has some pretty aggressive discounts on a variety of Huawei products today. From the Huawei Watch 2 to the Band 2 fitness tracker, and even the Mate 9 bundled with the Band 2, there are deals here for everyone.

• Huawei Watch 2 – $179 (Normally $299)
• Huawei Band 2 Pro – $49.99 (Normally $69.99)
• Huawei Mate 9 w/ Band 2 – $399 (Normally $524.98)
• Huawei Honor 6X – $144.99 (Normally $199.99)
• Huawei MateBook E – $499 (Normally $799.99)
• Huawei MateBook X Signature – $799 (Normally $1,099.99)

There are a bunch of other great deals available as well, so be sure to check them all out now! If you’re looking for an even more affordable Android Wear smartwatch, you’ll want to get in on this deal from Fossil on its 2nd-gen watches.

TL;DR

• What makes this deal worth considering? – Some of these items have never dropped this low before. Other items are a match for their lowest prices, but either way, this sale is full of great deals.
• Things to know before you buy! – Fossil currently has some even more affordable Android Wear watches available, so be sure to also check those out.

See at Amazon

Amazon Cloud Cam vs. Nest Cam vs. Arlo: Which connected camera should you buy?

Whether you want to keep an eye on things inside or out, Amazon, Nest and Arlo have some great options for home security cameras.

There’s hardly a dearth of home security cameras these days. Long gone is the necessity of professional installation — now it’s just a matter of figuring out where you want a camera, and connecting an app. Wires? Those are optional these days.

Here’s a top-down look at three of the more popular plug-and-play security camera systems: Nest Cam, Amazon Cloud Cam, and Netgear’ Arlo. Two of the three have multiple options, and all are relatively simple to set up.

And all three work well individually, and they also can tie into smart home systems, such as Amazon Alexa and Samsung Smart Things.

Let’s have a look.

Amazon Cloud Cam ($119)

Amazon Cloud Cam ($119 at Amazon)

This is Amazon’s first branded camera. And it’s a pretty simple camera, at that. It plugs in via Micro-USB and connects to your Wi-Fi via a dedicated Cloud Cam app. It shoots in 1080p, and has a microphone and speaker so you can hear them, and they can hear you.

This has all the basic motion awareness and notifications that you’d expect. No real tricks up its sleeve other than the ability to connect via Alexa to devices like Amazon Fire TV and Echo Show, so you can see what’s going on if you’re in front of one of those things, and don’t have your phone nearby.

It’s also one half of the (only somewhat scary) Amazon Key system, which lets Amazon delivery folks unlock your door to leave packages inside, instead of on the stoop.

Suffice to say this is just the beginning of this space for Amazon.

Amazon has three levels of cloud recording. Basic runs $6.99 a month (or $69.99 a year) and gives you seven days of storage for up to three cameras. A jump to $9.99 a month (or $99.99 a year gives you 14 days’ storage for up to five cameras, and $19.99 a month (or $199.99 a year) gets you 30 days’ storage for up to 10 cameras.

By the way: Amazon first and foremost is a company that wants to sell you things. How do you feel about it seeing into your home? Food for thought.

See at Amazon

Nest Cam (starts at $199)

Nest Cam ($193 at Amazon)

Nest — which is owned by Google — now has four cameras in its lineup. The two least expensive models are the Nest Cam Indoor, and Nest Cam Outdoor, and both run $199 and pretty much do the same 1080p stuff that Amazon’s camera does. (Nest’s app has continuously been one of the more enjoyable ones to use, for what that’s worth.)

The upgraded models are the Nest Cam IQ ($299) and Nest Cam IQ Outdoor ($349). They increase the total resolution to 4K (though it outputs at 1080p to make zooming in better) and have more smarts baked into them, with the ability to identify (or not) individual faces if you also subscribe to Nest Aware.

Nest Aware has a couple pricing tiers. For $10 a month (or $100 a year) you get 10-day video recording, smarter alerts, the ability to save clips and time-lapse shots, and customizable activity zones. The “extended” plan gives you 30 days’ history for $30 a month, or $300 a year.

See at Amazon

Arlo (starts at $171)

Arlo Pro 2 (two cameras plus base, $479 at Amazon)

Arlo springs forth from networking company Netgear (there’s a good chance you have one their routers), and it’s a pretty full-fledged security system, with a bunch of options for cameras.

On the wired side, the Arlo Q is the least expensive at $171. It’s a basic 1080p camera with speaker and mic and it plugs into the wall for power, and connects straight to the Internet.

Arlo ($199 for two cameras), Arlo Pro ($199 for one camera and base station) and Arlo Pro 2 are fully wireless, with rechargeable batteries. Each comes with a base station to connect to the Internet. Arlo and Arlo Pro do 720p video, and Arlo Pro 2 does 1080p. The two Arlo Pro models also have sirens in the base station.

Arlo cameras give you seven days of cloud recording for up to five cameras for free. (That’s tough to beat right there, though support is limited and only available for five months.) For $9.99 a month (or $99.99 a year) you get 30 days’ recording for up to 10 cameras plus unlimited support. And for $14.99 a month (or $149.99 a year) you get 60 days’ recording for up to 15 cameras, plus the unlimited support.

That’s not a bad deal at all.

See at Amazon

Facebook Messenger now supports sharing of 4K pictures

Just in time for sharing family photos after Thanksgiving dinner.

Facebook Messenger has seen a lot of new features added to it over the years. You can use Messenger to play games, check your PayPal balance, send money to friends, and plenty more. These expanded features are great, but the latest addition to Messenger focuses on a much more basic function – sharing photos.

If you’ve ever sent or received an image on Messenger, it was previously downgraded to 2K no matter the original resolution. However, starting today, Messenger will now support photos in up to 4K – or 4,096 x 4,096 to be exact.

This isn’t a huge change, but it’s certainly nice to have for keeping your photos as crispy as possible when sending them to friends and family members.

Messenger currently supports 4K photos in the United States, Canada, France, Australia, United Kingdom, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea. If you don’t see your country listed here, Facebook says it’ll be rolling out this feature to other markets in the coming weeks.

Facebook Messenger now allows you to send and receive money via PayPal

Amazon’s giving out free $2 credits to hook you on a new Kindle series

E-reading is magic.

Is this deal for me?

Amazon is celebrating Kindle series this week by giving customers a free $2 credit which can be used toward a large variety of e-books. This offer might even help you find a new favorite series, as the books in this selection are all the first in a series of novels. The credit must be used before November ends or it will be revoked.

If you don’t have a Kindle yet or need to upgrade, the Kindle is now on sale for $50 (from $80) and the Kindle Paperwhite is down to $90 (was $120).

Over 400 e-books are included in this section, and Amazon’s categorized them into Science Fiction & Fantasy, Literature & Fiction, Mystery & Thriller, and, of course, Romance.

Some of the best-selling books in this selection include:

• The Banished of Muirwood (Covenant of Muirwood by Jeff Wheeler
• The Hundredth Queen (The Hundredth Queen Series) by Emily R. King
• Pines (The Wayward Pines Trilogy) by Blake Crouch
• Blood on the Tracks (Sydney Rose Parnell Series) by Barbara Nickless
• The Hangman’s Daughter (A Hangman’s Daughter Tale by Oliver Pötzsch

If those don’t interest you, take a look at Amazon’s full list to see if there might be something else more up your alley.

TL;DR

• What makes this deal worth considering? – This offer gives you a free $2 off the e-book of your choice (within Amazon’s selection of over 400 titles).
• Things to know before you buy! – Your discount will be shown at checkout.

See at Amazon