When is there a Apple promotion?

I know every summer Apple does a promo where you get a free iPod if you buy one of their computers. My question is, does anyone know if they do that around Christmas time? I'm in the market for a MacBook Pro and I'm not sure if I should wait a week or two or just get it now.

Past history/experience would be appreciated. Danke.

They just had a similiar promotion right around back to school time. I can't remember if it only applied to students or everyone. They were rebating ipod touches when you purchased a new computer.

yeah, i know about the "back to school" promo...i was just hoping that there be one around the holiday times too lol

The free iPod promotion is a back-to-school thing. I don't recall any special promotions at other times of the year.

The best bet if you want to buy Apple stuff on the cheap is to wait until new models are released, when they lower the prices of the older models. Like they just introduced new iMacs a couple weeks ago, so that week would have been a good time to buy an older model iMac at a much reduced price. Another option is to look at the refurbs at the Apple online store. Somtimes they aren't the most recent models, but they are usually a pretty good deal anyway. If I were in the market for a new Mac laptop to replace my first-generation MacBook, I would hop on the $999 13.3" MBP:

http://store.apple.com …cialdeals/mac/m​acbook_pro

BTW, you know that it's never a good idea to buy the upgraded models, right? You can buy 500GB laptop hard drives for $100 or less (not to mention SSD's are a lot cheaper than Apple offers them), and 4GB of DDR3 SODIMM RAM is about $100 as well. The CPU and video card upgrades that Apple offers are mostly worthless as well, unless you are really into PC gaming and want to play PC games on your high-level MBP, which will be $500 more expensive than a basic model while being outperformed by a $500 PC that you could buy separately.

I was going to buy the basic macbook pro 13.3" one and just get a 2TB external hard drive and upgrade the **** out of the ram lol I guess I might as well just buy it tomorrow or something since there's really no promos for it

check slickdeals.net or look for coupons online.

apple.com promotions are rarely any good. The best deals that can be found are:

apple employee discount
student B&M discount (this is sometimes better than the student online store discount)
amazon.com or other online retailer (that you don't pay sales tax on)

depending on what company you work for, you may also have some prenegotiated corporate discounts, but these are rarely above 8% for apple hardware, 4% for 3rd party accessories. basically, it covers sales tax.

Apple always has a black Friday apple.com sale, but I've never seen anything that great. I actually find the best prices to consistently come from amazon.com.

Another option would try to see if you can scoop up some Apple gift cards on one of those gift card reseller websites. If you could get gift cards at 80-90% on the dollar, there's some additional savings for you.

There will probably be a "Black Friday" sale next week, but in the past they have only offered around $100 off of computers. You can usually do better from MacConnection, Amazon, etc. since Apple charges sales tax. If you are looking for a custom BTO model, you are probably stuck ordering from Apple, the other vendors seldom have the "optioned out" models available, although sometimes B&H has had some available.

-howard

Leonard Wong and hfgarris' posts are spot-on. If you don't qualify for an educational or government/military discount, your best bet is to wait until this upcoming Friday to order (usually a $100-150 in savings) or order from Amazon if you don't need a BTO (build-to-order) machine. (no sales tax for most)

Apple has never offered a free iPod except for the back-to-school special.

Bryan

is it possible to use a military discount and have someone else pay for it?

tnguyen600 wrote in post #9056747
is it possible to use a military discount and have someone else pay for it?

I'm not sure if I understand what you mean.

If you work for the federal government (as a civilian or military), then you are entitled to the discount.

Bryan

Here is a Black Friday deal from last year http://www.macrumors.c​om …scounts-iphone-app-sales/ so we can expect something similar this year too...

and here is what MacRumors.com posted for "black friday" keywords http://www.macrumors.c​om …friday&submit=S​earch+Site

Wait for Black Friday and see what kind of deals they have at the Apple Store before buying. If you don't have an Apple Store near you the same deals will be provided for online sales and shipping has typically been free.

Yeah, I'll wait but I'm going to be buying it at Best Buy...not the B&M store

I just saw best buy ads. They are having a sale on Apple products. I haven't actually look at it in store, but it says $100 off iMacs and $100-200 off macbook pro.