"Apple is holding a one-day sale for turkey-tired customers in the US on Black Friday"

The sale is also going to be in the UK as well!!! Come on guys, show a bit of loyalty to your fellow countrymen!

I wonder how much discount us Brits are gonna get from them... Seeing as we don't celebrate Thanksgiving over here...

My bet... 0% discount!

I'd reckon that would be the only way Apple would stop a decline in sales. They marketed themselves into the fashion department, which is usually also tagged as "useless & expendable". When you're cash-strapped, flashy things suddenly aren't that important anymore; and you surely aren't going to buy a new iPhone/MacBook when you barely can pay your mortgage.

During economic recession, it's usually the "bargain prices" brands the one that actually keep having profits, as it is less probable to be put in the cost-cutting guillotine. Most of Apple's products, however, have a 10x cheaper equivalent, even if it is from some shoddy Chinese outfit.

us right pondians? We are pretty cash strapped too.

Sure buyers might be slowing down, but that's not the reason Apple is doing this! Take a little look into history and you see that this day is a very long standing tradition of Apple! And in effect nothing out of the ordinary as students get these kind of discounts all year around...So besides free advertising for Apple hardly no news in it...

. . . Apple do this annually - it's the only time they discount non-reconditioned kit. Although typically the discount is so insignificant it's not worth bothering with.

May be some mileage in it, as some UK resellers are offering over 10% discount this weekend.

"But the fact that Apple is slashing prices in-store is indicative of how bad the retail market has become in recent weeks."

Not really, they ran this promotion in UK stores last year, possibly in previous years as well.

Apple does not cut prices.

This ia as likely as Apple releasing a PC version of OS/X

The 1 day sale is also happening tomorrow (Friday) in the UK.

St. Eve aparently has a shopping event for us in the UK too...

According to the New Zealand and Australian Apple web stores then the discounts are similar to the Black Friday last year .. not great .. similar to the discounts most people can get if they buy as or for a student. Oh well ... by the time this gets moderated I guess we will actually know in the UK and US 8-)

Why bother?

They only appear to have taken off about the same amount that will account for a VAT saving next week.

Apple UK also sent out emails to their customers, letting them know that the Black Friday deals apply to Apple Stores and the Apple Online Store in the United Kingdom too.

:-)

Not even worth getting out of bed for here in Australia.

Will 15% bribe me to buy a premium laptop that can't hold its lid on anything but an office table? Or maybe an iPhone that's crippled by poor AT&T service? So close, but no.

All these fab schemes seem to target US consumers only - eg Microsoft's search rebates and rebates on photographic gear like Sandisk CF and Canon gear.

Why is the rest of the world not important? This might sound naive, but I really just don't get it.

Mine's the one with the world economy in its pocket.

Discounts not all that great. In fact, pretty piddling. Still bigger than any forthcoming VAT saving though (when you look at that particular no-trick pony, you discover that it's worth the square root of bugger all unless you're buying something in the "stonkingly expensive, but still VAT-chargeable" category.)

If you didn't have the money to buy an iMac before, I doubt 30 quid off would change your mind.

The discounts on the UK store are rubbish.

@ac - it's not just the us, check the site. it looks like it's everywhere

@Christian Legg - agreed, not a huge saving really apart from a few accessories, I'm wondering if they're doing it to see how people react to to the price, what with the uk change in vat

@Jean-Paul - agreed, people seem to be quick to blame the recession/credit crunch for everything. Take Woolworths in the uk, they've been going out of business for years, if we were in a high year like before they'd still go out of business. It's just bad timing.

Anyway it's nice they're doing it, but luckily i'm not in the market for apple products as i have a few already and don't need an upgrade just yet

So much potential for sales, so greedy for money.

... to paraphrase Withnail.

Anyway, if I am to believe the TV and other media reports, it seems that the Americans are entirely responsible for the current financial crisis. Apparently they lent all our money to crack whores and hobos so that they could buy big houses and 4x4s.

So it seems only fair that their single surviving business (Apple) should be made to pay. I think Steve Jobs should be forced to dress up as Santa and visit all our houses individually with a gift-wrapped MacBook (a Pro mid you, none of your low-end shit).

And if he thinks I am making special vegan mince pies just for him, he can fuck off. I might have to live in a shanty town and eat gravel for the next 5 years but at least I'll have my pride (and a nice laptop).

I can't comment about the Sandisk CF rebates, but I regularly see adverts for cash back on Canon SLR cameras and lenses here in the UK. As my existing equipment is Nikon I have never bought anything to make sure that the cash back works though.

So around 6% then? C'mon Apple, you can do better than this.

Still, at least the next time I go in there will be plenty of space to wonder around in - except of course around the pseudo internet cafe area

...and this comes just in time for Buy Nothing Day!

Seems the UK Apple store is running this one day sale too - though the savings don't seem to be exactly earth-shattering. A whopping 4-6% off MacBooks!

I hope they got bigger discounts in the US because the ones we got here were so derisory that there's no way they'll stimulate unplanned purchases.

In fact it'll be cheaper to buy a new Apple product in the UK on Monday post the VAT reduction than today through the Black Friday penny off scheme.

I had a look on the Apple UK website earlier for some credit crunchy apple goodness but alas, still too expensive to warrant a pre-festive treat.

"This ia as likely as Apple releasing a PC version of OS/X"

I thought modern Apple computers are a PC hardware wise.

Apple are offering massive savings, it doesn't take much surfing of their site to find that they are offering upto 22% off some items. That's right - you can get some in-ear headphones for your iPhone for for only £54 (normally £70).

@Dapprman, most of the discounts might only be 3-6% but it is still a lot more than the 2.1% UK.gov are offering.

Apple's US discounts are a bit better, but not much.

@Andrew Waterworth - "Discounts not all that great. In fact, pretty piddling. Still bigger than any forthcoming VAT saving though (when you look at that particular no-trick pony, you discover that it's worth the square root of bugger all unless you're buying something in the "stonkingly expensive, but still VAT-chargeable" category.)"

Indeed, if you were to buy a fully-spec'ed top of the range Mac Pro on Monday you could save a couple of hundred quid in VAT - of course you'd have to spend about £12,000 first - and about £6,000 of that would be on RAM that's only worth about £1,500.

If you read their statement about the VAT adjustment, they say that the price quoted shows VAT at 17.5% vat, the current rate.. however, because the item won't be built/despatched until at least Monday 1st December, the final invoice will actually show 15% VAT.. so they ARE passing the savings on to you at the time of charging your card.

So there... that's your bus fare home as well.

Still cheaper on Amazon.