Black Friday is no longer contained to the day after Thanksgiving. Deals roll out in a chaotic stream all throughout November, and these days, you can score great deals among the lackluster discounts.

For 2019, Best Buy, Newegg, and Amazon have all offered an early taste of sweet bargains. Today's the last day of this round, but we expect further teasers to come soon. Keep an eye peeled for further updates as the days tick by—we’ll add new deals as we spot them.

Not sure if you should wait or buy now? Newegg's second round of Early Black Friday sale offers an interesting twist: If the company offers a lower price on a purchase between now and the end of November, they'll refund you the difference. Otherwise, holiday return windows have just expanded (many run into early January), so you can buy now and repent at leisure, assuming you can float the cash.

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Apple is planting its own flag in the streaming wars with Apple TV+, its in-house streaming service that features only original programming—no reruns of hit TV shows or last year’s blockbuster movies.

The company is said to be spending several billion dollars a year on original programming. That’s a lot of TV! It’s nothing compared to the $12 billion Netflix spent on content in 2018, but it’s still a very big investment.

What can you get for all that money? Apple is attracting some of the best talent in TV and film production, including huge stars and directors, and locking down the television and movie rights to best-selling books.

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According to a report from Axios, Apple is going to remove apps that control vaping products from the App Store. 

Apple has never allowed apps that allow a person to purchase vaping related products, but there are many apps made to be used in conjunction with them (to control time, temperature, lighting, and so on). Other related apps to get the axe include vaping-themed social networking and news apps. If you have such an app already installed it will continue to work, however.

Apple issued the following statement to Axios:

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Apple Arcade is here, and you can play some of the subscription service’s many games with select models of Xbox One and PlayStation 4 controllers as well as Mfi (Made for iOS) controllers!

During Apple Arcade’s announcement, though, Apple gave the impression that all Apple Arcade games would work with gamepads (in part because the service will eventually also come to macOS and tvOS), but it turns out that’s not entirely true. Some games have interfaces solely designed for touchscreens—at least on iPhone and iPad. 

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Apple’s new Apple Arcade subscription-based gaming service is finally here. It’s basically Apple’s way of helping customers sort through the chaff in the App Store, as the highly curated service features premium games that are untainted by in-app purchases and ads. If all goes well, it could elevate the perception of mobile gaming in general.

Got questions? Fortunately we have plenty of answers. Here’s everything we know about Apple Arcade so far.

Updated 11/15/19: Added Rosie's Reality to the list of available games.

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A just-released beta firmware update for the camera, which is among the first to support HomeKit Secure Video, allows users to securely store recorded video clips in iCloud.

For video makers, the highlight of this year’s September Apple keynote was undoubtedly the slick demo of Filmic Pro taking advantage of all four iPhone 11 cameras to record multiple angles at the same time. Multi-cam is a great way to quickly create dynamic videos without the time-consuming task of shooting a performance multiple times from different views.

Although Filmic Pro’s multi-cam update isn’t expected until later in the year, there are other ways to shoot and edit multi-camera video right now, using as many as four iOS devices you already own. Unfortunately, the app in question turns out to be cooler in concept than execution.

Multi-cam shooting Roland

Have access to four iPhones or iPads? With 4XCamera Maker installed, you can turn them into a multi-camera video recording studio.

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Apple listens.

It often seems like it doesn’t, for a couple reasons. Firstly, because it usually doesn’t come right out and say “we’re listening”—at least not specifically. But more visibly, because the actions that result from that listening generally take a pretty long time to come to fruition.

The old metaphor for something that’s slow to change is "turning a battleship," but Apple is so big at this point that it’s more like turning a flotilla of aircraft carriers that have been lashed together as a floating city. In the middle of a glacier.

We’re talking slow here, people.

The 16-inch MacBook Pro released this week points to the fact that Apple can bring its ships around, eventually. And even when they do get on a new heading, it might not be exactly the one that all of its users are looking for. But there are certainly enough significant changes in this latest update to indicate that the company is looking to keep its customers, especially its most vocal ones, happy.

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While hampered by buggy setup and a high price tag, Eve enthusiasts may find this device worth a look.

The third-generation indoor/outdoor leaps forward on the shoulders of the top-of-the-line Arlo Ultra.

It’s not the first and it won’t be the last, but Wednesday’s announcement of the 16-inch MacBook Pro is probably the clearest sign thus far that Apple has changed its priorities when it comes to the Mac.

It’s a process that’s been visible in public for a couple of years now, and it’s not quite done—but here in the latter half of 2019, we’re getting our clearest look at a company that got out of sync with some of its most important customers and has realized it needs to change some of its assumptions about product design.

Tweaking Jobs’s Law

Apple is clearly guided, at least in part, by a design philosophy that considers size and weight to be the enemy of good. I like to call this Jobs’s Law, though it could just as easily be called the Ive Doctrine: Always strive for the next version of your product to be thinner and lighter than the current one.

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Apple has released a firmware update for the AirPods Pro. The excellent new wireless earbuds originally shipped with firmware revision 2B584, the new revision is 2B588. It is not clear what the new firmware does; Apple does not typically issue release notes for accessory firmware updates. The minor revision number suggests that it is a small bugfix or reliability update.

There is no good way to force your AirPods Pro to update the firmware—they do so when they connect to your iPhone, on a schedule determined by Apple. You just have to use them as normal and trust that they will eventually be updated.

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Now that Apple has video and music streaming, games, all-you-can-read news, and online storage services, the only logical next step is bundling. And a new report from Bloomberg suggests Apple will be doing just that in 2020.

According to the “people familiar with the matter,” Apple is already taking steps toward that end. In the latest deals with News+ partners, Apple is reportedly building in a clause that lets it “bundle the News+ subscription service with other paid digital offerings,” thus lowering the percentage publishers get paid per view.

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Apple on Wednesday finally took the wraps off the long-rumored 16-inch MacBook Pro, and it ushers in a new era for the highest-end Mac notebook you can buy. Most notably, it brings a much-needed change to the keyboard, eschewing the maligned butterfly mechanism for more traditional scissor keys that should be quieter and more reliable than recent models.

But along with a bigger screen, better speakers, and more battery, the new MacBook Pro still feels like an iterative update rather than a transformative one. Yes, it introduces a new screen size for the first time in years and retires a model that’s been in existence for more than a decade, but aside from some extra pixels, the new notebook doesn’t really break the mold or offer much in the way of big change.

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There’s a gaping hole in Photos, and it’s not a missing photo of your grandma. Rather, it’s how the app handles adjusting the date and time of photos that have been imported without the correct information.

This has quite likely happened to you, based on the volume of reader email about this particular situation.

When iCloud Photos syncs images captured on an iPhone or iPad, the date and time of capture comes through correctly. Likewise if you use the Finder (in Catalina) or iTunes (in Mojave and earlier) to sync images between your Mac and an iPhone or iPad.

However, importing images captured elsewhere, such as on a digital snapshot, mirrorless or DSLR camera, or scanned photos and documents, Photos relies on a combination of the file’s creation date and time and embedded metadata. In many cases, the date and time you see for an image in the Finder is what Photos uses to tag the image in its library.

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Despite a few launch gremlins, Disney’s online streaming service looks to be a major contender.

Achievement badges are a funny thing. You know they’re just a simple little bit of visual flair, they don’t even do anything, and yet for some reason you just have to collect them. Achievements are great motivators, and the achievement badges for the activity tracking on the Apple Watch have inspired many users to get more exercise.

If you want to maximize your badge count, you’re going to watch to chase down as many activity achievements as you can. Most are available year-round, but there are also some time-limited special events to grab, too. Here’s a list of all the activity achievements for the Apple Watch and how to unlock them.

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Brave Software releases its privacy-minded Brave browser for general use. It's an excellent, streamlined browser that commits itself to your privacy, and with the potential to make you some money, too.

It’s going to be a while before the Fitbit-Google partnership results in anything tangible, but in the meantime Fitbit is continuing to refine its wearable vision. The company announced Wednesday that it will be rolling out the Fitbit OS 4.1 update in December, and it brings a bunch of new features that prime the Versa for an inevitable Wear OS merger.

The biggest change is also the most visible: the clock face. Fitbit is finally adding the ability to store extra faces on the watch, so you don’t need to visit the app on your phone every time you want to change the look. Fitbit will now let users store up to five faces on their watch, and a new rating system will make it easier to find quality clocks from the 4,000-plus faces available in the gallery.

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Professional Mac users got a lot of good news on Wednesday. In addition to revealing the new 16-inch MacBook Pro, Apple announced that the Mac Pro, the company’s workhorse tower computer, will begin shipping this December.

When specifically in December, Apple wouldn’t say. Regardless, the December shipping window comes after the Mac Pro was revealed at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference this past June. And it was way back in 2017 when the company announced that it was working on a whole new design for the Mac Pro, a design that replaces the cylindrical model that was first introduced in 2013.

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The meatball that shook the world has investors salivating

At the second annual Cultured Meat Symposium in San Francisco on Friday, donuts featured prominently on the breakfast menu and lunch involved only plant-based options. Attendees the day before had the opportunity to sample mechanically prepared beef burgers, courtesy of robo-restaurateur Creator, but lab-fabbed meat didn't make an appearance. Give it about five years – that was a guestimate from one attendee.…

Trust your hardware? Pah, you oughta trust nobody

Claims that 5G offers “better security” for IoT may not ring true – with the technology remaining vulnerable to SIM-jacking attacks within private Industry 4.0-style deployments, according to infosec biz Trend Micro.…

Tanks of nitrous oxide needed for, erm, science eh?

A team of researchers have built a terahertz laser that might one day see through clothes, book covers, and even skin, using laughing gas, according to a paper in Science.…

The case that just won't die

The US Supreme Court has agreed to once and for all decide the copyright case between Oracle and Google after nine years of legal wrangling.…

Illinois man gets more than a year in the slammer for $550K DDoS scheme

A US court has sentenced the operator of a massive DDoS service to 13 months in prison.…

Meanwhile, his co-defendant has troubles getting into land of the free

The US State Department has until 1 December to get its paperwork in order and show how it wishes to proceed in attempting to extradite ex-Autonomy boss Mike Lynch to face charges.…

Though not much detail on said list, except security and privacy

Some 14 years after it was founded and with no external funding taken in during that time, 1Password has finally succumbed to the charms - and $200m in cash - of venture cap biz Accel.…

Just goes to show, stick with what you know

The ill-conceived and costly error of doubling down on the crypto-market is almost a distant memory for Nvidia as the GPU maker reported results that indicate an upward turn in fortunes.…

Change rolled back, but it's not a good look

An experimental feature silently rolled out to the stable Chrome release on Tuesday caused chaos for IT admins this week after users complained of facing white, featureless tabs on Google's massively popular browser.…

Admits open-source API bigger than any one company, but it is not letting go

Google's Cloud Run service, which lets you run containers on Kubernetes (K8s) using a serverless model, has hit general availability, and El Reg has taken it for quick spin.…

'The news overnight ... making everybody in the sector pause and consider'

TalkTalk has yet to find a buyer for its infrastructure investment vehicle Fibre Nation, the business revealed in its results for the half year to 30 September.…

Still a better love story than Twilight

NSFW In what is certainly a crowded field, step forward the Doncaster Free Press and take a bow for the best local news headline of 2019: "Doncaster traffic bollard used by man for sex 'killed' in road smash".…

Bezos' empire strikes back claiming 'unmistakable bias', self-recused defense chief denies it

Amazon is headed for court to contest the surprise decision to hand Microsoft the $10bn US Department of Defense JEDI IT supply contract.…

Mate 30 Pro's modular innards praised, but glue still abundant

The good geeks of iFixit have ripped open Huawei's first Google-free handset, the Mate 30 Pro, to find a serious battery powering the big screen and sophisticated camera setup.…

I'll huff and I'll puff...

Something for the Weekend, Sir? Help, I forgot my keys! [rummage] Oh yes, of course – ah don' need no stinkin' keys, my front door locks smartly.…

Amazingly made it to 2 years without telling anyone his name

The High Court of Justice in London yesterday dismissed another attempt by an unnamed man, who refuses to identify himself to the UK courts, to take his Right To Be Forgotten legal action to the Court of Appeal.…

The 1980s called and it wants its state-owned telco-provider back

Labour will today pledge to give the good folk of Britain free broadband by 2030 by part-nationalising BT - if the political party gets elected.…

*Cough cough*

The privacy-focused Brave web browser has reached version 1.0, available now for Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS and Android.…

Well, Clarice?

On Call Hit reset on the working week for Friday has arrived and with it another entry in The Register's long list of on-call shenanigans.…

How neuroscience can help AI

In a bizarre experiment, researchers recorded the brain activity of mice staring at images and used the data to help make computer vision models more robust against adversarial attacks.…