Will Apple again offer a free ipod with a Mac purchase? (1 Viewer)

[Jon_Are]

My daughter will be picking up a Mac laptop for the fall '09 semester. When her older sister did the same, two years ago, she nabbed a free ipod.

I see no such deals on the Apple site, and I'm wondering if this is an annual offering, or did older sister just get lucky with her timing?

If Apple usually offers such a deal, anyone know when I might expect an announcement? Likely summer time, I'm guessing.

Thanks,

Jon

 

[Carlo_M]

Your best deal is going into summertime because Apple knows a lot of kids leave school for the summer (hence don't purchase Apple products during those months) and try to entice them to purchase something before they leave. Also, graduating students are enticed to use their academic discounts before they lose it for good. So that really is the best time for promotions, but that said, there's no guarantee there will be anything of the sort every year, but I've seen it happen I'd say 3 times in the past 5-6 years so chances are decent.

Also, they tend to be clearing out older iPod models to pave the way for the new ones (or in one case new ones had just come out but they were exempt from the deal) so don't expect the latest/greatest iPod to be part of the promotion...

 

[Quincy]

I don't know about that, when i bought the wife a new macbook we got to pick any ipod that we wanted, so she picked the touch and it had only been released for about 6-7 months.

 

[Carlo_M]

The two times previous they did clear out only older style iPods. I do remember that the last time they offered a "free" older version, but if you wanted a newer version, you got $100 or $150 off of that iPod. Or did your wife really score a free iPod Touch? (i.e. a $299-$399 value for no out of pocket cost)? That would be way more than what my student store gave on the last round of "free" iPods with a purchase of a Mac! I gotta go to that student store!

And 6-7 months on the market qualifies to me as being "older" stock since they tend to replace/refresh annually. I remember one year (a few years back) when literally the iPod refresh happened while the "free iPod w/ Mac purchase" promo was on. That's what I recalled when I said they only allowed the free iPod to be the older gen, not the one that just came out. But who knows, maybe they'll trend now towards giving $$$ back, meaning it's "free" if you buy an iPod that is under that dollar amount and not free if you want a higher-cost iPod...