Apple Black Friday 2013 Deals Revealed: No Discounts, Free Gift Cards w/ Purchase

Apple’s in the midst of launching its Black Friday 2013 promotions around the globe. Unfortunately, Apple is not offering Black Friday discounts and is instead offering gift cards with select purchases. The gift cards can be redeemed at the Apple Store only and cannot be used for iTunes or App Store purchases.

Apple rarely discounts its iPhones, iPads, iPods and Macs to the general public, though it does regularly offer college students and businesses discounts. Last year Apple offered $101 off Macs on Black Friday and many were expecting Apple to repeat the offer this year.

Read: Best Apple Black Friday 2013 Deals

Apple isn’t officially calling its gift card promotion a Black Friday event since it is offering the deals around the world. Though Black Friday is an American phenomenon, Australians are the first to benefit from the promotion.While the gift card amounts and linked items in the Apple store are advertised in Australian dollars, we expect them to translate over to U.S. dollars. We’ll know with certainty once Apple officially launches its Black Friday deals on its U.S. online store in the wee hours of Black Friday.

Apple typically launches products, early ordering and promos based on PST since the company is headquartered there. That means those on the east coast will have to wait up until about 3am EST if they want to be amongst the first to take advantage of the deals. Unlike iPhone, iPad and Mac resellers, Apple is not likely to run out of any of its own items which means there’s no need to rush.

Apple’s Black Friday iPad deals aren’t as attractive as Walmart’s and Target’s. Those retailers are offering up to $100 in gift cards with iPad purchases on Black Friday, but quantities are limited and they are not available online. Apple is offering an $$75 gift card with the iPad and an $50 gift card with the iPad mini and iPad 2.

Apple is offering an $150 gift card with the purchase of any iMac or MacBook. That’s a superb deal on the cheapest Macs, such as the $999 11? MacBook Air since it amounts to a 15% discount. However, it isn’t much to brag about on the high-end 15? MacBook Pro, which costs up to $3,199 at retail depending on configuration.

Perhaps the best deal at Apple stores and Apple.com is the $50 gift card that can be had by purchasing the $249 iPod touch, effectively dropping the price to $199. The iPod touch is a superb Christmas gift since it offers many of the benefits of the iPhone without the messiness of gifting a device that requires a long-term wireless contract.

Read: iPod touch Review

The iPhone 5c and iPhone 5s are notably absent from Apple’s Black Friday Australian landing page. Apple is however offering gift cards with its own accessories and third-party accessories.

Best Apple Black Friday 2013 Deals

The iPhone Black Friday deals cut the price of the iPhone 5s and the iPhone 5c dramatically and gift card bonuses make things even better. Walmart offers the best iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c prices for shoppers who want a contract with AT&T, Verizon or Sprint.

The deal includes a $45 iPhone 5c and a $189 iPhone 5s and a $75 gift card. T-Mobile is offering an iPhone 5s for $0 down and $20 a month for 24 months and Sprint is offering $100 off for switchers.

You will need to sing a new contract for most of these deals and be eligible for an upgrade. Check out the rest of the iPhone Black Friday 2013 deals for other stores near you which may have similar offers. If you want the iPhone 5s without a contract, RadioShack offers an iPhone 5s on Virgin Mobile for $549, a savings of $100.

Cisco Whiptail purchase for $415 million in the midst of solid state storage run

Overview: Cisco acquisition highlights career in solid-state storage enterprises as players data center are intended to accelerate applications.

Cisco Tuesday said it will acquire Whiptail, a system of solid state memory company, for $415 million. Cisco plans to integrate memory technology of solid state of Whiptail in their software products unified system (UCS).

Under the terms of the agreement, Cisco will pay $415 million in cash and Whiptail retention-based incentives. The agreement is expected to close in the first quarter of Cisco. Cisco acquisition highlights career in solid state storage companies. On Monday, Western Digital recogías Virident for $685 million.

According to Cisco, Whiptail will increase performance in UCS for speeding of applications. Cisco plans to integrate data acceleration technology in its coat of calculation.

Whiptail employees will be integrated into the Group of computer in Cisco systems.

In a blog post, Cisco said:

Whiptail is architecturally perfect for UCS because together the two combine architecture cluster with acceleration based on fabric - all of which are automatable via the UCS Manager and Director of UCS. The end result is performance optimized atop of UCS for emerging critical applications and business, as virtualized workloads, of Big Data, database, High Performance Computing and transcoding.

Whiptail has a number of systems - Accela, Invicta and Invicta infinite - and an operating system called Racerunner.

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet SmartPlanet as Editorial Director of ZDNet TechRepublic site sister.

Twitter looks to boost mobile advertising strategy with MoPub purchase

Summary: The idea behind the MoPub purchase is to improve optimizing ads to each user in real-time on the micro-blogging stream.

Turning the focus briefly away from the TV set, the M&A department over at Twitter is turning its attention to mobile.

The latest target is MoPub, a mobile-focused advertising exchange self touted to be the "world's largest mobile ad server."

The micro-blogging giant confirmed the merger on Monday, highlighting interest in further development around optimizing ads to each user in real-time.

Kevin Weil, vice president of revenue product for Twitter, explained in a blog post that MoPub's talent and resources will be "to build real-time bidding into the Twitter ads platform so our advertisers can more easily automate and scale their buys."

The MoPub team has built a leading mobile ad exchange, and their focus on providing transparency to advertisers and publishers aligns with our values. We’ll continue to invest in and improve their core business. In particular, we think there is a key opportunity to extend many types of native advertising across the mobile ecosystem through the MoPub exchange.

MoPub CEO Jim Payne added in a separate blog post this afternoon that Twitter has been "mobile-first" in its strategy since day one, making the "two companies a natural match."

However, Payne also stressed that the publishing platform won't change -- at least for now.

"Twitter will invest in our core business and we will continue to build the tools and technology you need to better run your mobile advertising business," Payne continued.

Financial terms of the deal were not included in these statements, but TechCrunch is reporting that Twitter paid approximately $350 million for MoPub.

Rachel King is a staff writer for ZDNet based in San Francisco.