obvious blog post is obvious.
Ok, so what does this really mean? That I can buy an electronic product for less if I am willing to wait a little bit? Well, isn't that the case for all e-goods, outside of limited quantity, high demand items, especially the ones that will never again be released? The only example I can think off the top of my head is the Super Mario game for Wii that was limited edition. And we all remember the days of sky high eBay auctions for the Xbox360 and PS3.
So dealnews posts 4 examples. The MacBook Pro must have had a promo the same day they were released. Ok, I'm sure I would have been in on that one.
Next, the iMac went down $100 one week later. Well, in that case, I'm sure Apple would have (not sure if they actually did) refund the difference somehow, since it was only one week. I recall instances of Apple doing this for iPods and such. Third example is the iPad2 dropping in price, a whopping $10!!, a little over three months after launch date. Whoo. Hoo. And the last example, which is most applicable for me, the MacBook Air, dropped what looks like $40-50 one day later, and another $100 or so about six months later.
I'm going to ignore the first three, because they seem irrelevant.
The price drop for the MBA a day later, again, I'm sure a refund/credit can easily be attained. The $140ish price drop SIX months later? Well, sure, money is money. (Obvious = obvious, again.) But I'm NOT going to wait six months to save on a "new" product, because then I get caught in a bigger predicament. Six months after a product is released, you get caught in between.
Do you get the "new" product six months after release at a discounted price and risk becoming the owner of an "old" product less than a year after the purchase? Or do you wait for the "new new" thing, and then start this cycle all over again?
Clearly, you are either in a permanent predicament (if you base your purchases according to articles like this one from dealnews), or you just go and buy what you wanna buy, when you wanna buy it.
Sure, you should be diligent and do your homework, like knowing release date cycles, but don't wait simply to save, cause then you'd just wait forever. No one wants that.
So when should you buy a Mac? When you want one.
