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Apple Embarrassed By UK Price? - See Their Promo E-Mail

spcdust

spcdust

macrumors 65816
Original poster
May 6, 2008
1,104
196
London, UK
Are Apple a bit embarrased by the price in the UK as I got this e-mail today promoting the new iMac and noted the quoted price:
Apple Grab.jpg
Maybe I'm wrong but I've never known them to quote the Education price before in these promotional e-mails and I'm certainly not registered as an Educational customer, seems a bit smoke and mirrors to me.
 
Even with the Education discount, it's still £2 more than the cheapest 24" cost on Monday. :)

I was talking to a couple of the lads in my local Apple reseller yesterday and they are very concerned with the price increases for the new desktops.
 
OllyW said:
Even with the Education discount, it's still £2 more than the cheapest 24" cost on Monday. :)

I was talking to a couple of the lads in my local Apple reseller yesterday and they are very concerned with the price increases for the new desktops.
Click to expand...

Same here, talking to an aquantence who works at an Apple store said a few of them have raised their eye brows at the prices and think it will be a harder sell.
 
I went to the Apple Store in London's Regent Street yesterday after work, and I think at least 5 or 6 people that I saw or heard enquired about the old iMacs. I actually went to enquire about the old model too and the Apple sales guy I spoke to said the new iMacs were not shifting as well as they hoped (still very early days of course!). He said a lot of people are looking to get the old model while they still have them!

I ended up ordering a refurb iMac 24" 2.8 GHz online last night since the price increase for the new 24" models pushed them over my budget.
 
the_fellowship said:
I went to the Apple Store in London's Regent Street yesterday after work, and I think at least 5 or 6 people that I saw or heard enquired about the old iMacs. I actually went to enquire about the old model too and the Apple sales guy I spoke to said the new iMacs were not shifting as well as they hoped (still very early days of course!). He said a lot of people are looking to get the old model while they still have them!

I ended up ordering a refurb iMac 24" 2.8 GHz online last night since the price increase for the new 24" models pushed them over my budget.
Click to expand...

Wandeep, I'm off to Regent's Street tonight. Did you see the old model still available to check out. I read another thread from someone (can't find it now) that was able to do a speed test of new/old models side-by-side and found the older model faster in some respects. He ended up buying the older model.

Long time pc user, I delayed my iMac 1st purchase because I thought the new model may be an improvement, but I see little difference bar the extra cost. I was willing to pay more if it had a better spec, eg Quad core.

Refurbished = returned model? What did they tell you about it? Is that a bit risky?
 
the_fellowship said:
I went to the Apple Store in London's Regent Street yesterday after work, and I think at least 5 or 6 people that I saw or heard enquired about the old iMacs. I actually went to enquire about the old model too and the Apple sales guy I spoke to said the new iMacs were not shifting as well as they hoped (still very early days of course!). He said a lot of people are looking to get the old model while they still have them!

I ended up ordering a refurb iMac 24" 2.8 GHz online last night since the price increase for the new 24" models pushed them over my budget.
Click to expand...

Obviously early days and Apple won't mind as it clears their old stock but it's not a great indication of how this update has been received is it?
 
movilla said:
the_fellowship, I'm off to Regent's Street tonight. Did you see the old model still available to check out. I read another thread from someone (can't find it now) that was able to do a speed test of new/old models side-by-side and found the older model faster in some respects. He ended up buying the older model.

Long time pc user, I delayed my iMac 1st purchase because I thought the new model may be an improvement, but I see little difference bar the extra cost. I was willing to pay more if it had a better spec, eg Quad core.

Refurbished = returned model? What did they tell you about it? Is that a bit risky?
Click to expand...

I'm not sure if they have the older iMac still on display, the one I was playing around with was the newer one. It's hard to tell just by looking at them, so I had to go the Apple -> "About This Mac" menu option to get detailed system specs. Also it was quite busy so I was unable to get to use any of the other iMacs (loads of people checking their emails or Facebook etc lol)

When I enquired about the older model, they said they did have some in stock but the prices were still the same (for the 2.8 GHz 24" in my case). I think the price has been lowered for the old 20" 2.4 GHz and the old Mac Mini 2.0GHz. They brought out a folder which contains the updated prices, so best to check with them :)

The refurbs are covered by a 12 month warranty (exactly the same as brand new macs) so it's not too risky (even though the first refurb iMac I got earlier this week had a fault!). Was easy to arrange for it to be picked up and a refund given.

It's worth having a look and play around with the macs, I wish I had done that before ordering my first (faulty) refurb 20" 2.66 GHz iMac. After seeing the 24" screen compared to the 20" screen, the decision was easy lol :)
 
bartelby said:
Refurbs are normally a safer buy than new as they individually get QCed.
Click to expand...

Do you get to know how many miles are under the clock? I mean, do you know if it's a month old or a year old? I guess the machines are (software) blasted but they may have been heavily used.

You only get 1 year protection on them? I think you can't buy APP to cover 3 years.
 
movilla said:
Do you get to know how many miles are under the clock? I mean, do you know if it's a month old or a year old? I guess the machines are (software) blasted but they may have been heavily used.

You only get 1 year protection on them? I think you can't buy APP to cover 3 years.
Click to expand...

You can get AppleCare for refurbs:
Picture 1.png
 
If anyone is thinking about getting one of the old models and aren't keen to go down the refurb route, don't restrict yourself to the Apple Store and keep an eye on other retailers who stock Apple computers.

I managed to get a 24" iMac 2.4 for £200 off list price with 12 months interest free credit last year when the new models were announced.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5H11 Safari/525.20)

i'm going to get a new 24" very soon. Can someone tell me apart from the extra RAM and hard drive what is better/different from the previous model?
 
redgaz26 said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5H11 Safari/525.20)

i'm going to get a new 24" very soon. Can someone tell me apart from the extra RAM and hard drive what is better/different from the previous model?
Click to expand...

The Harddrive is bigger and costs less, the RAM is DDR3, the GPU is more powerful.
 
the_fellowship said:
I It's hard to tell just by looking at them, so I had to go the Apple -> "About This Mac" menu option to get detailed system specs.
Click to expand...

Just look at the base. The new ones have a tapered base like the ACDs. The Alu is thinner on the front of the foot. Or you could look at the back at the ports.
 
EmperorDarius said:
The Harddrive is bigger and costs less, the RAM is DDR3, the GPU is more powerful.
Click to expand...

Hang on, that is misleading. The base 20" and 24" now use 9400 GPU which is a downgrade from the previous model, and the two top end have equivalent graphics to the old GPU. Frankly get a previous model if you can, much better value.

The jump to DDR3 is minimum.

To put it bluntly the 9400 is a Laptop integrated GPU.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5H11 Safari/525.20)

EmperorDarius said:
redgaz26 said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5H11 Safari/525.20)

i'm going to get a new 24" very soon. Can someone tell me apart from the extra RAM and hard drive what is better/different from the previous model?
Click to expand...

The Harddrive is bigger and costs less, the RAM is DDR3, the GPU is more powerful.
Click to expand...

it doesn't cost less over here in the uk. Bass model 24" is £75 more now. Not that I mind that. But now I'm Reading this base model is less powerful than the older base model????
 
Went to the Apple shop in Regent's Street tonight and wasn't especially impressed with the new model, seeing as it's the old model with a higher base and higher price. The helper at the iMacs area said it was faster but couldn't explain why or how, so advised me to go to the purchase area for more details. There, I got the same spiel but this time it was 'even more powerful' but when I asked if there might be a quad core model later his eyes glazed over. New versions come out in September, he replied, so realising I was talking to a chump, I walked away.

I really wanted to buy an iMac but it's not worth it. They laughed at me in work when I said my planned 24" 3.06GHz model with APP, etc would cost £1,950. 2 grand for a desktop computer. Equivalent Dells sell for half the price.
 
The old top end model can be picked up for £1186 inc vat from macwarehouse.co.uk.. and as you say there is very little difference. The new model's price is erm... special at the top end LOL!
 
Whilst at my local Apple store (Birmingham, UK) I noticed a little card (behind the new mac prices) explaining that the older gen mac were still available. It mentioned something about 'great' prices, but I didn't pay too much attention to it so I might be wrong on the exact wording.
 
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