While Apple's 15" MacBook Pro was the first consumer notebook to gain a Retina-level display nearly a year ago, it is no longer the only such offering, as Google's Chromebook Pixel with its 12.85" 2560x1700 display and Toshiba's Kirabook with a 2560x1440 220 PPI display have joined the market in recent months. Seeking to raise the ante on Retina displays, Samsung and Sharp have both introduced new high-resolution displays in the past week, targeting notebooks and ultrabooks with the latest technology.

Ars Technica shares several photos of an early functional prototype of the iPhone from 2005, revealing a device closer in size to a thick iPad mini than an iPhone. The photos were sent to Ars by an anonymous former Apple employee who worked on the project in the early 2000s.

Apple CEO Tim Cook may testify in the e-books antitrust lawsuit filed against Apple and book publishers by the United States Department of Justice, reports Bloomberg . The lawsuit was originally filed in April of 2012, and has focused on the so-called 'agency model' for pricing ebooks that Apple attempted to negotiate with a number of publishers

Reuters reports that Sharp, one of Apple's primary display panel partners for its mobile devices, has slashed production of iPad displays at one of its plants.

Seeking to enhance its profile among music buyers, Amazon today announced the launch of AutoRip , a new service that offers customers who purchase physical CDs through Amazon free digital copies of their purchases through Amazon Cloud Player. The service is also retroactive, meaning that customers who bought any of the thousands of eligible CDs through Amazon since 1998 will automatically find digital versions of their past purchases in Cloud Player.

Following yesterday's announcement that Apple CEO Tim Cook had been named to the shortlist for TIME 's annual Person of the Year feature, the magazine has published a lengthy profile of Cook today covering his runner-up status. Much of the information in the profile has been discussed in other settings, but it offers a good overview of Cook and his time at Apple

Following last month's launch of new Mac mini models , a number of users in the MacRumors forums and Apple's support forums have cited issues with flickering on external monitors connected to their machines via HDMI.

Last week , a report from french site MacBidouille claimed that Apple may not be shipping their new iMac until early 2013, despite Apple's official promises that the new iMac models would ship before year's end. 9to5Mac now reassures us that Apple's original plans are still intact for the iMac

In years past, a handful of Apple retail stores in the United States opened up at 12am midnight for the Black Friday sales event, which takes place the day after Thanksgiving.

Late last month, Apple informed its outside OS X software testing group, known as AppleSeed, that a build of OS X 10.8.3 would be coming there way shortly. Today, Apple informed the same people that its previous note about 10.8.3 was sent prematurely. The invites were sent out a little too early.