I took a brief moment yesterday to look away from all of the pre-debate news chatter to check out Apple’s new MacBooks. While I was excited to read about the new Nvidia graphics cards (I’m a bit of a gaming geek), I was incredibly dissapointed to see that while reducing the price of most of their laptops by less than a hundred dollars, the 10% educator discount has now been reduced to what appears to be 5%.
Now I know what most analysts might say; Apple laptops are in high demand, and therefore there’s little to no reason to reduce the price. If margins are high, and the laptops are flying off the shelves, then why take a hit on the profits. However, in a market where fairly decent Windows laptops can be purchased for less than $700, Apple’s products aren’t quite as appealing to my pocket book as they once were. To steal a line from Saturday Night Live, “really Apple?!” You’re going to call a $50 break on a computer a discount? And one aimed at educators?
While I don’t expect Apple to rectify the situation anytime soon (their machines are in such high demand after all), it really makes you ponder just how dedicated some corporations are to helping educators stretch their dollars.
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I too was a bit miffed at the drop in the discount. Educators (along with graphic designers) have been the most ardent supports of Apple over the years. I guess Steve doesn’t really care much anymore now that apple has been able to penetrate the laptop market so deep over the last couple of years. My thoughts-it’s gonna bite them in the end. After the uber-cool of Apple products wears off, ultra portable, sub $400 laptops will be where it’s at. The iPhone is great, but it’s not anywhere near the workhorse a laptop is.
Funny thing is that I checked out Amazon’s pricing and it’s actually a better deal to order from them–educator discount or not. When purchasing from Amazon, I don’t pay tax and i get free shipping. After pricing out the new macbook–i would save $80 over ordering it directly from Apple (with the “educator’s discount”.
I had not known about the change in pricing. That’s disappointing. I know our IT department is always talking about how much cheaper the Dells are and recently made us aware of a great price they were offering educators. I know the value of the macs goes beyond price, but it is hard to convince some. And that 100 dollars is/was a big deal for teachers who offer pay out of pocket to support their use of technology in the classroom.
Their smaller ticket items have no discount anymore (i.e. iPods) and that has been for a while. Actually, I was looking for a netbook the other night on Dell’s website and this is pretty much the standard discount. The profit margins in computer hardware are slim anymore.
James O’Hagans last blog post..Parental Control Blues
Actually a decent (for “work” stuff) laptop can be had for $400, or maybe a little less if you watch. That coupled with the fact that Apple also dropped the Firewire port on the “cheap” laptops…..leaves one wondering.
It’s a decent machine, but you really have to want it. Firewire is so fundamental to caring for these machines if you have several, I consider that a real punch to users as well. AND, since the machines don’t have a card slot, I’m assuming there’s no way to add one???
In OfficeDepot, $1,000 gets you a Quad-core desktop with 8 Gigs of RAM. $600 at several places gets you a mini-notebook for adequate computing on the run. The combination is quite potent. The MacBook has enough power and video that you can’t call it a base model….but there’s a lot of exciting choices out there at the moment. I can’t see this being one, other than just a mildly updated version.
This is such a disappointment. Educators especially should have if anything a higher discount rate. More importantly, during this harder time when money is a little tight, a business whose business is probably not hurting too badly could offer a little bit of a break for teachers. They are the ones that are educating and teaching the students who will one day run Apple..and the nation..and everything else we have around us. I know this is a lighter topic that I’m making a bigger deal out of than necessary, but seriously?! Educators are barely getting a discount at all, again, not that better 5% than nothing. Either way…I have and use a Dell with no problems at all. I just thought I’d put my 2 cents in and argue for those who have or will be getting a Mac or using Apple etc.
I got two orders last time for the price of one.. 100x better than any broken vending machine 🙂