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Apple Announces 2024 Black Friday Event, Offering Up to $200 Gift Card
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Amazon now has the 5K Apple Studio Display with standard glass and tilt stand for $1299, down from $1499 just yesterday at Amazon and $1599 at Apple direct. Not a bad deal for the notoriously overpriced, but otherwise outstanding, display. I have been waiting for this Black Friday sale and just ordered it.
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No you won't.
You do not get the gift card when purchasing on the Education Store.
How generous. Buy our older stuff and get a gift card that you likely would've rather used towards your actual purchase. Now you'll be forced to buy more crap to use it.
Someone should setup a black market for these cards. If you get a $200 gift card, sell it for like $100. That way you get $100 off your computer, and someone else gets $100 off their next purchase, effectively creating their own sales.
Someone should setup a black market for these cards. If you get a $200 gift card, sell it for like $100. That way you get $100 off your computer, and someone else gets $100 off their next purchase, effectively creating their own sales.
That's a bummer. I will try, however. The Terms & Conditions don't explicitly say the Education Store...it says "Resellers, public entities, government entities, nonprofit organizations, educational institutions, education purchasers, enterprise purchasers, and business purchasers do not qualify..." To me, "education purchasers" is more like a Purchasing Department at a school...not consumers like me trying to buy 1 item. But again, I will try and see what the shopping cart does.
At the end of the day I have this $150 GC that I need to use...I originally thought I would buy software for the Macbook Air but I never did.
The last time I bought from Apple’s Black Friday sale was to buy my iPhone 12 Mini.
Apple always has older hardware (only) available for the sale. At the time the iPhone 13 has just been released. The differences between the 12 Mini and 13 Mini weren’t that great, so I was happy buy the cheaper 12 Mini and also get the extra gift card.
But this time, the differences between the iPhone 15 and iPhone 16 are very notable (the extra memory needed for Apple Intelligence).
If it was Black Friday 2025 and the iPhone 16 was the phone available for the sale, that might be a good time to buy. But not this year’s sale with the iPhone 15.
Apple always has older hardware (only) available for the sale. At the time the iPhone 13 has just been released. The differences between the 12 Mini and 13 Mini weren’t that great, so I was happy buy the cheaper 12 Mini and also get the extra gift card.
But this time, the differences between the iPhone 15 and iPhone 16 are very notable (the extra memory needed for Apple Intelligence).
If it was Black Friday 2025 and the iPhone 16 was the phone available for the sale, that might be a good time to buy. But not this year’s sale with the iPhone 15.
I wish they brought back the AirTags offer from BF in 2021 which was a $25 gift card on a $99 4-pack.
Apple is the only source for custom engraving that shows up in the OS when you connect them.
Unfortunately, these products are usually full price at Apple, and are significantly discounted at other retailers without engraving.
I'm tempted by the AirPods Pro 2, though.
Apple is the only source for custom engraving that shows up in the OS when you connect them.
Unfortunately, these products are usually full price at Apple, and are significantly discounted at other retailers without engraving.
I'm tempted by the AirPods Pro 2, though.
There are websites for exactly that. Nothing “black market” about it though. Well… I know there are black market sites out there (people doing gift card scams and whatnot), but there are also legitimate sites for selling legitimately-obtained gift cards.
I’ve used “Raise” many times over the years to sell gift cards I don’t need. Never for 50-cents on the dollar though (as in your example). That’s quite low of an amount. Depending on the gift card (Apple being a high demand gift card) you could probably get 85-cents on the dollar (after subtracting the discounted price you are selling it for and the fees associated for selling the card the card).
Note: I haven’t used “Raise” since they changed their platform name to “GCX”. I’m assume it’s still the same thing with a different name, but I haven’t used it recently, so I’m not 100% sure.
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That's a good deal ($100 lower than the Apple Education Store price) - if you live in MissouriFYI... MicroCenter has the new Mac mini M4 Pro model $200 off today ($1,199 instead of $1,399). I am going to get pick one up. Also you get an additional instant 5% off if using the Wells Fargo Micro Center credit card to make the purchase, making the M4 Pro Mac mini $1,139.99 before sales tax.
Apple Mac mini MCX44LL/A (Late 2024) Desktop Computer; Apple M4 Pro 12-Core CPU; 24GB Unified Memory; 512GB Solid State - Micro Center
Get it now! Introducing the far mightier, way tinier, all-new Mac mini. Five by five inches of pure power and purpose. Redesigned around Apple silicon to unleash the full speed and capabilities of M4 Pro chips. With a wide array of ports, now on the front and back.www.microcenter.com
Sold out at the SoCal store ... plus there's only 2 SKUs, this is for the base model M4 Pro Mac mini with the lower CPU & GPU count than the BTO you can configure on the Edu site.
That’s my point as to why it isn’t a good analogy. Apple also offers discounts to the third party retailers for these sales (which is why they all magically have the same or similar sales at the same time). Apple doesn’t do it directly so they can maintain the luxury appearance of the brand.
You may disagree, but you won’t find a sale on any of their Macs, iPhones or the like on Apple.com.
Even when they discount models and want to clear stock, like they just did with the M3 Macs, they ran heavy sales via Best Buy and others with discounts as high as $1K on some models. There was $0 off at Apple.com period.
It specifies in the Terms that it cannot be combined with Veterans/Military store pricing.
Does anybody know if you can buy these products with a pre-existing gift card balance, and still get the promotional gift card? There is a Black Friday deal for Best Buy and Target where $100 Apple Gift Cards come with $15 BB/Target gift cards.
It worked for AirTags for Black Friday 2021 and a MacBook Air for back to school 2022.
For the former, I used my Apple account balance, and a combination of gift cards and Apple account balance for the latter.
