It’s that time of year again; students have from now until September 7th to pick up a Mac under educational pricing and get a free 8GB iPod Touch as part of the deal.
As Apple famously does not offer big sales on their product line this is about it in terms of deals on current hardware and is probably the best time to buy if you are in the market for a new Mac anyway. Even if you don’t want the Touch they can fetch around $150 on Ebay and help further defer the cost of your new iMac or Macbook.
I have to say that I was really expecting Apple to include the iPad as a potential upgrade on this deal. It seemed like a perfect fit to offer the option of a $200 discount on the iPad for those that don’t want an iPod Touch and I think potentially could have really spiked their numbers with a demographic that they have to desperately want to own.
While the iPad is performing well in the current vacuum with relatively no competition to speak of that time is going to draw to a close in the next 6 months and they are foolish to squander any opportunity to draw buyers into their ecosystem now. $75-$200 in app and accessory purchases into their iPad experience buyers would be considerably less inclined to jump ship for a few added niceties like Flash and the Chrome browser.
What do you think, did Apple blow a chance to really cement their lead or are those that aren’t getting an iPad firmly enough entrenched that discounted pricing wouldn’t sway them?
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