Are you dying to own a Mac, but you just can't get your mind past the minimum $1000 cost of getting an Apple computer? If so, today may be your day to buy. It's Black Friday, and even Mac prices are getting cut. These prices aren't as deep as other tech products, but you can still find some deals from online retailers. I've taken a look at a number of these Mac sellers to give you the lowdown on what you need to know before making a purchase.

Battle of the Mail-in Rebate

Club Mac, Mac Connection, and MacMall have some great deals on Apple computers. You can get a white 13-inch MacBook for $884.98 at Club Mac and MacMall, for example, while Mac Connection sells the same computer for $849.

Mininova, one of the largest peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing sites next to The Pirate Bay, has now removed most of its links to copyrighted content. The site complied with a Dutch court ruling from August. Mininova has said it is considering appealing that ruling.

Netherlands-based Mininova has risen in recent months as one of the most popular torrent sites on the Internet, alongside The Pirate Bay, which is still maintaining a strong presence despite fines and threats to close down the site. But Mininova had to comply with a court ruling from three months ago, which ordered the site to remove all the links to illegal content.

It's game on for bargain hunters. Black Friday is here, and so are the super sales. If you're wondering what the latest tech deals are Friday, you're in luck. While you've been sleeping off that food hangover, I've scoured the Web for the best and freshest deals.

Not ready to brave the crowds? Don't despair, those in-store doorbuster deals are for suckers anyway. So instead of heading out to fight the maddening crowds, shop smart from the comfort of your home or office.

Black Friday doorbusters are loss leaders designed to whip up consumerist lust and draw shoppers to stores. Retailers typically lose money on these giveaways, but hope that while you're online or in store, you'll grab a few high-markup items too.

Have too much stuff to store (or know someone who does)? You can't expand your home, but if your stuff is digital, you can buy a bigger hard drive. One of these hard drives can help you expand your storage. Among this year's Black Friday bargains, we've found 1TB external models for $80, and a wave of 500GB portable drives for between $60 and $80.

Western Digital's My Passport Essential is physically small, but packs 500GB of storage space; Staples will have it as an in-store special for just $70. (Western Digital's Website sells the drive for $140, while Newegg.com sells it for $100, no post-Thanksgiving sales promos involved.) Best Buy will have the My Passport Elite 500GB for $80 in-store with limited quantities. Meanwhile, Target is rumored to have a 500GB Western Digital drive as an early-bird special--but that's a different model (from the Elements line), and it will cost just $60.

With help from the extremely useful PriceTrace.com, a deal aggregator that includes PDF scans of Black Friday circulars from major retail stores, I've been on the hunt for particularly good point-and-shoot camera deals.

My requirements: The camera has to have tested well in PC World Labs evaluations and in hands-on reviews, and the Black Friday deal has to be a cut of $50 or more from the manufacturer's suggested retail price.

In this special Thanksgiving episode of the PC World podcast, editors Tim Moynihan, Mark Sullivan, Ginny Mies, and Patrick Miller tell you everything they know about Black Friday tech deals, tricks, pitfalls, and problems.

Download the podcast here.

Will 2010 be the year of the e-reader? It sure looks that way. Amazon continues to improve its popular Kindle lineup, and Barnes & Noble claims it can't keep up with customer demand for its new Nook e-reader. Meanwhile, a host of competitors, including the Sony Reader and lesser-known products from Plastic Logic (Que), Foxit Software (eSlick), and others, promise to give e-reader fans plenty of options.

One of the great things about video games is that pricing is fairly standardized, which makes Black Friday video game deals extremely easy to spot. The industry's recession jitters are also your gain, with lots of new games for cheap and generous console bundles for the same price you'd normally pay for a system by itself. If you're buying for someone else and are totally lost, check out some gift ideas for gamers, then delve into the Black Friday deals below to see how you can save.

Playstation 3 Bundles

A new revolt seems to be brewing against Apple's notoriously murky method of approving apps. Known for its questionable rejections and communication-free delays, the App Store has long come under fire by developers who feel they're being left in the dark. Even the guy behind Facebook's official iPhone app called it quits this month, telling tech blog TechCrunch he was "philosophically opposed to the existence of [Apple's] review process."

Apple Senior VP Phil Schiller defended the app approval process in a story published by BusinessWeek on Sunday, but neither his explanation nor Apple's recent introduction of status updates for developers seems to have calmed the storm. And now, the opposition is about to get even louder.

Way outdone by rivals like Hulu and YouTube, Web video service Joost is now in the throes of winding down, only two-and-a-half years after its rollout with very high hopes by Skype co-founders Janius Friis and Niklas Zennstrom.

Major magazine publishers are uniting to solve that old media dilemma of how to survive new media, rumor has it, and they'll soon be opening a joint storefront to peddle their digital wares. Time, Condé Nast, and Hearst are among the publishers who will participate in this iTunes-style magazine store, according to the Observer, but concrete details are scarce. Here's how I'm hoping it pans out:

Bring it to iTunes

Magazines are sold in grocery stores and bodegas, and even newsstands sell lots of other stuff, so why pen digital magazines into their own marketplace? Make the store an annex of larger, existing digital storefronts. Publishers could still sell digital magazines directly, but their content will be easier to stumble upon in places where people are already shopping.