Apple Archive

Back in December, Walmart offered the Apple iPhone 4 for $147 which included a $50 gift card.  Today Walmart has announced they are bringing back the Apple iPhone 4 special for $147 with no gift card required. The sale model is a 16GB version available for both AT&T and Verizon as your carrier choice. And you can select from the black version or the new OMG OMG OMG white version. The deal is available in Walmart stores that have a mobile department.

This is a $50 savings over the Apple store price — you still need to sign a two-year contract. There are still refurb deals on the iPhone 3GS direct from AT&T for $49 and $99 however now I would steer you towards spending the extra $100 for the latest Apple iPhone model. Of course there is talk of a new iPhone arriving later this summer.

I am starting to wonder if Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) is trying to clear out all of their inventory of the current Mac lineup. Last week MacMall offered the MacBook Air base model for $849. Today MicroCenter is offering the base model 13″ 2011 model of the MacBook Pro for $200 below the Apple Store price.

MicroCenter is offering the MC700LL/A model for $999 although you must pickup the laptop at a local MicroCenter store. You will need to pay sales tax since you will be purchasing the laptop in a local store.

Currently Amazon is offering the MC700LL/A model for $1,164 but there is no tax for most so if you don’t live near a MicroCenter, Amazon might be the way to go. I have seen the Amazon price drop to $1,113 a few times over the past week so you might want to track the price for a few days before pulling the trigger.

There is talk that you might be able to get your local Apple Store and/or Frys to match the MicroCenter price.
Continue reading “MicroCenter Offers 2011 MacBook Pro 13″ for $999” »

If you have been wanting an Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) MacBook Air, today might be the best day to pull the trigger. MacMall through eBay is offering the base model 11″ MacBook Air for $849 with free shipping. This is the best price I’ve seen on the MacBook Air since Amazon dropped their price to $899 last November (their price is back up to $990). Also, it seems if you aren’t located in New York State, there is no tax on this unit.

Purchasing this unit at Apple.com, the total price will be about $1,080. If you are not in NYS, this deal will save you a huge $231.

In speaking with a few Apple fanboys, the only real downside to this unit is the low 2GB ram which cannot be upgraded since the ram chips are fused to the motherboard using a 50,000 ton press. You should also note this machine only has a 64GB flash hard drive which Engadget noted yesterday on a review of a different laptop was somewhat small. Lastly, I will note that it seems you need a lot of dongles to make this unit effective.

Specs on this MacBook Air from the auction, “1.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB DDR3 SDRAM, 64GB Flash Storage, NVIDIA GeForce 320M, 11.6″ LED-backlit glossy widescreen display, AirPort Extreme Wi-Fi 802.11n, Bluetooth 2.1, FaceTime camera, Built-in battery, Precision aluminum unibody”

I know, I know…Apple does nothing wrong, the iPhone is perfect, yay Apple. With the required Apple is awesome statement out of the way, I’d like to share a very important bit of poor usability in the Apple App Store. The good news is that the issue can be corrected very easily.

This past week on the tech blogs there were two major stories: the launch of the $41-million, VC-baked photo sharing app Color; and the beginning of fun posts about whether we are in a bubble or not. Rackspace employee Robert Scoble wrote a rant where he described how Color will basically never be able to recover from their initial App Store launch. I haven’t installed Color but one of the things Robert noted is that Color has a large number of “scathing reviews” and two-star ratings.

I read a few of the blog posts around the Color launch and wanted to check out the reviews and ratings Robert mentions in his post so I loaded iTunes and landed on the App Store page for the Color app. Below is a screenshot of what I see when the Color page loads. If you look at the red arrow, it points to the Rating for the Color app. It says 4+ which clearly means that Color has a rating of higher than 4 but less than 5 probably meaning the average is 4.xx. This was very confusing to me because Robert said that Color had a much lower overall rating of near 2.

Oh! While it doesn’t look like a link, the “Rated 4+” actually means that the application itself has an age rating of 4+ which means it’s basically approved for all audiences.

When you scroll down on the Color app page, you see what I’ve posted below – the customer ratings for the app. This is horrible usability – it makes nearly all apps with “Customer Ratings” of below 4 appear as if they have much higher overall ratings.

Apple could easily fix this by changing “Rated 4+” to “Age Rating” and placing “Average Customer Rating” right below it with a link that takes the customer down to the customer ratings section seen below. Assuming others agree with me, it would certainly be interesting to look at download counts for low customer rating apps after the change is made to see if in fact this major usability issue led to higher download counts.

I remember when the new Air Jordan sneakers came out — everyone wanted the new style, no one wanted last year’s model. You could get huge discounts on the “old” version of the sneakers — sometimes more than 50% off the original price.

Earlier this month we saw Apple reduce the price of their refurbished iPad devices by about $150. And just a week ago Josh Lowensohn at CNET reported that AT&T reduced the price of the AT&T 3G version of the original iPad by $100. AT&T is still offering their iPad deal — a 16GB AT&T 3G original iPad is selling for $429.

Today I am reading on multiple deal boards with several confirmations that Verizon is selling the 16GB WiFi original iPad for $299. This model does not come with the 3G service only WiFi and the deal appears to be available only in Verizon stores. Confirmations have come in from across the country.

If you read some of the Apple fanboy blogs, it seems like if you have an iPad 1, you might not want to upgrade to the iPad 2. The fanboys suggest if you are purchasing the iPad for the first time, the iPad 2 is the way to go. Apple describes the iPad 2 as, “faster, lighter, thinner” — I think the big difference is the camera and the “cool” cover (that’s the real gem of the iPad 2 and why the fanboys ran out to buy one so they can make sure everyone knows they got an iPad 2 like the Jordans).

This deal is a $200 savings over the new iPad 2. That’s a lot of apps you can buy. I think this deal will get a lot of people thinking of an iPad before they consider an Android tablet.

When I was a youngster, I busted my butt at the supermarket every week. And about once a quarter, I bought the new Nike Air Jordan sneakers. These sneakers were crazy expensive and my mother would yell at me (mainly because people were robbed for their Jordans in NYC) that I shouldn’t spend so much on sneakers. But I remember that even though they were expensive, there was something magical about wearing them. I can’t dunk a ball (though I was good at the three) but walking around Brooklyn in the sneakers just made me feel a bit cooler than if I bought just the basic sneakers.

When people ask me why the iPhone has been so popular, I reply by saying, “it’s the white headphones.” I only owned an iPhone for three weeks when it first launched because there was no AT&T signal in my apartment building in Manhattan. When I returned the iPhone, I went with a Samsung ACE which has Windows 6 Mobile. The phone has been great, it handles email great, phone calls with Sprint have always been rock solid and I like the keyboard. It’s a great utility phone, but it doesn’t have the white headphones.

I’ve taken two flights with Virgin Atlantic in their Upper Class service (I used points back in the day when the points from Delta transferred – it was sweet!). The experience from the second I arrived at JFK and LHR was absolutely amazing. Virgin Mobile has tried to copy the “look” of Virgin Atlantic but I am not sure the experience offered is the same.

I am not an Apple fanboy, but there is no doubt that when you buy an Apple product or visit one of their stores, it’s like slipping your feet into a pair of Air Jordans. I think Apple has realized that making a phone is easy, it’s making an experience that is much harder. These mobile devices are attached at our hips, in a purse, a fanny pack, or a belt clip night and day. And so the experience is so important today with technology. I bought an Apple iPod Touch during the holidays on Amazon and just opening the packaging made me think the device was made for the experience.

Continue reading “My First 24 Hours With Android and Virgin Mobile and Why Apple Currently Has Won The Experience Battle” »

So the big news today from Apple is the new iPad 2. It is thinner yadda yadda, lighter yadda yadda, has more ram, has some cool new software, Scoble loves it, it can get you dates, it can help you balance your checkbook, it can help you fix a flat tire, there’s nothing it can’t do. Brad McCarty at Next Web has a recap of all of today’s iPad 2 announcements including the seriously cool case that can be folded up into a stand.

Last September, I posted about a variety of refurbished iPad deals at the Apple Store. At the time, the refurb iPad 16GB WiFi model was available for $449.  Today they have lowered the price to $349 or $150 less than the new iPad 2. The Apple Store has all of the details. The prices range from:

• $349 for the 16GB WiFi model
• $479 for the 16GB WiFi + 3G model
• $529 for the 64GB WiFi model

Apple notes regarding their refurbished Apple iPad devices:

• same 1 year warranty as a brand new iPad
• all manuals and accessories
• a new battery and outer shell (to me this makes the device look brand new)
• a new white box (ha!)

So if you don’t care about the cameras, the thinnerness (new word!) or the lighter weight of the iPad 2 and still want to get in on the action, you might want to check out a refurb iPad original. You can call it the Classic iPad like Classic Coke.