
Yawn...
Typical Apple marketing, leak, buzz, hype.
Apple plans to offer modest discounts on Macs, iPads, and iPods for one day only on Friday, according to the 9to5Mac website, which said a trusted tipster leaked the details of its day-after-Thanksgiving sales. iMacs, MacBook Airs and MacBook Pros will be marked down by $101, while iPads will be discounted by $41 to $61 …
...of people saying that Apple products are over-priced. Have you ever calculated the TCO for a Windows laptop vs., say, a MacBook Pro? Have you factored in the cost of software upgrades? Support?
Okay, so you hate Apple, great, it clearly works for you to have this chunk of hatred constantly churning in your soul, but don't talk balls about something you have no idea of.
I've done TCO calculations, and the Mac works out much cheaper, and knocking $101 off their machines makes them even more of a bargain.
Besides, how much are the new ultrabooks when compared to a MacBook Air? Oh, I see.
I, for one, am happy that Apple are having their annual Black Friday sale. It knocks some cash off the iMac I need to buy for my business.
I've factored in the cost of a year's worth of crappy wi-fi drivers in update after update on my desktop iMac. It did rather take my time up using a kext from an old version of Tiger which worked then reading the Apple forums after every new update to see if this was the one that worked (before the messages were deleted).
iPhoto and iTunes database corruption.
Bluetooth driver updates which cause kernel panics.
Please don't try and sell Apple products as perfect and therefore worth the extra cost because they free up your time because in all honesty they don't. See also overheating MacBooks, dying hard drives in MacBooks, video driver problems, iOS 5.0.1, Airport problems, Time Machine problems, iPhone reception issues (although never having suffered these problems personally).
There's little to choose now between a PC with Windows 7 and a Mac, apart from if you like the UI a little more.
The TCO for my current windows box that i have had for about 18months, is currently, exactly what i paid for it in store.
Much the same as most other PC's that i have brought, apart from the occasional hardware upgrades, which, correct me if im wrong, but you cant really go round upgrading your nice shiney mac book can you?
I'm going to beat that D@v3, TCO for my 7 year old crappy windoze laptop is exactly what i paid for it in store plus the cost of a new PSU.
I already had a legit copy of orifice 2000 which still works quite well for the times when I have to use M$ format documents and apart from that all my (software) needs are fulfilled using open sauce software. Thankfully functionally is more important to me and I have no need to own the latest shiny thing.
Paris, for my hardware needs
Its not much of a leak, considering Apple emailed me about it two days ago!
"Apple News_AUS_NZ@insideapple.apple.com to me
show details Nov 22 (2 days ago)
Mark your calendar. This Friday, 25 November is the special Apple one-day shopping event. Shop online to receive special pricing and free shipping all day."
"It knocks some cash off the iMac I need to buy for my business."
We just bought a load from Amazon (themselves - not a marketplace vendor) with 8% off list which is pretty decent.
You can get cheaper hardware but for a business you should be looking at TCO and user experience - we have found them cheaper to maintain and the hardware more reliable and the users prefer them - bit like the difference between having a Ford or a BMW as a company car.
...only a complete numpty would choose a Beemer as a company car.
Oh, hang on, you'd have to be a bit mental to choose a Ford as well.
And that, m'lud, is where the analogy breaks down.
Actually, unless you do silly mileage and choose something with a fairly low CO2 emission, or are happy to taking a stinking great hit from dear old HMRC, you'd probably have to be a bit mental to take a company car at all nowadays, wouldn't you? I'm fortunate enough that the last one I had was back in the good old days when company car taxation was based on a percentage of the list price of the vehicle adjusted down through three simple mileage reduction bands whereby you could get into the mid band at the very least if you had a bit of nouse. Add to that the fact that the people I worked for at the time used a hire/lease company that offered a huge range of different cars and the net result was that various folks ended up blatting around in Subaru Impreza WRX's and such like - immense fun to drive, but still fairly practical and remarkably gentle in terms of the tax hit. In fact, much easier on the pocket (and definitely lots more fun) than most of the normal rep-mobiles and just about any of the "luxury" brands.
Sorry, sorry, I'll put the rose-tinted glasses away.
Back on topic, Apple's price reductions may not be astronomical, but if you were thinking of maybe adding something Mac flavoured (particularly that MacBook Air that was mentioned) to your household computing collection, you'd still be a bit daft not to take advantage of Friday's fun and games. Even it if is only a hundred dollars (or a hundred quid or whatever), better off in your pocket than theirs, no?
Alternatively, if you absolutely hate, loathe and detest all things Apple and want no truck with those hellspawn, then that's fine too isn't it? Nobody's going to hold a gun to your head and force you to genuflect madly in the nearest shiny-shiny Apple Store are they? Just chill guys - use whatever floats your boat. (Full disclosure here - yes, I do sometimes work on my dear wifey's MacBook Pro or 8-core Mac Pro, both of which are very nice. I also have an iPhone and an iPad myself, but I use PC's at the office, have a Windows XP laptop at home, my music PC is a big Win7 64-bit box and I can't remember offhand how many Linux boxes I have - I think I've only got two now, but it may be three, they just don't tend to get used much any more.)
It's all just good fun really isn't it?
"For one day only, these products will be Marginally-less-ridiculously overpriced? What luck! That 60 bucks was really what was holding me back this whole time."
Simple - don't buy one. But are they really that overpriced - the Macbook Air seems competitive, people seem to be struggling to sell an iPad clone (from a major vendor) for about the same price and the SIM free Samsung Galaxy IIs (iPhone copy?) is pretty much the same cost as the iPhone 4/4S.
When you factor in 'service' (you get far better service from Apple than HTC and other phone manufacturers) and the total cost of ownership things start to look different.
It's like the old open source software vs. paid software argument - sure it's 'no cost to buy' but that is not the whole story.
ARTICLE IN leading UK computer magazine this month, details from the company that took it apart and priced up the goods individually. I costs £4.99 in production costs, the rest is the cost of parts.
Suggest you muppets go to WH Smith and browse a while and you will find it.
THEN come back and grovel and I may accept you apology.
"Typical Apple marketing, leak, buzz, hype."
And yet you read the article and took the time to post on it. Must've worked huh?
As per usual amazed that folk who "hate" Apple click on a story titled "Apple one-day-only sale". What possible value could they think there is in it for them? Some very strange folk out there.
"Celebrating a holiday that means nothing to anyone else and has a lovely racist name."
Oh FFS - so because it's 'Black Friday' it's racist - well guess I'm a racist as my car is 'black' and looking in the car park there are some other black and white cars as well - so guess they are all racists too.
There are many possibities as to why it's called 'Black' Friday but not aware of any that are racist. Get real.
"£125 to manufacture, parts labour and shipping, an iPhone 4S, you buy it for £600+.
Who is the mug?"
You are - what facts did you actually base that on - nothing - thought so.
If you could really make an iPhone for £125 why are Samsung not selling their iPhone copies for £150. Apple do make a decent chunk on them but the 'raw' hardware cost is only a part of the story - R&D, legal bills (!!), service / support etc.
Why not look at Starbucks - coffee - less than 10p to make - costs about £3 - bar(rista)stewards!