MacMall's Black Friday Apple deals include $40 off iPad Air 2 16GB, $798 MacBook Air
If you were unhappy with Apple's decision to once again offer iTunes gift cards as an enticement to shop its stores on Black Friday, instead of the (small) discounts it used to offer, MacMall's deals could be for you. While the longtime Apple reseller isn't offering any kind of incredible doorbusters (save one), it is taking at least something off pretty much every iPad and Mac available, even the new iMac Retina 5K display and the high-end Mac Pro.
Black Friday 2014
In every case, MacMall provides a smaller discount on low-end configurations and then boosts the savings on higher-priced models. It's taking $40 off the 16GB and 64GB iPad Air 2 Wi-Fi and 16GB Wi-Fi plus cellular versions, for instance, $50 off the 128GB Wi-Fi or 64GB Wi-Fi and cellular flavors, and $75 off the 128GB Wi-Fi plus cellular Air 2s. The 16GB first-generation Air is $30 off, the base iPad mini 3 receives a $25 price trim, the base iPad mini gets $20 off, and the original 16GB iPad mini earns a measly $10 discount.
The savings are a little more aggressive for the Macs, starting with a huge savings off a MacBook Pro with Retina display. Now it's not quite as good a deal as it might seem initially. The $300 savings includes a $70 mail-in rebate, and you'll notice that the 2.4GHz Core i5 processor is not one that comes with any of the MacBook Pros in Apple's current lineup (and the 4GB of RAM is half what the newer laptops include). In other words, the $999.99 price is for a last-generation model. That's not necessarily a bad thing -- it still works out to being $100 less than Apple sells the non-Retina MacBook Pro for. Just be aware it's not the newest version you're getting a deal on.
MacMall also has the base MacBook Air for $798, or $101 off. That's not quite as good as Best Buy's $779.99 deal, but that's a doorbuster price and thus for a limited time on Black Friday morning. Note that the Air laptops MacMall is sellling that come with 8GB of RAM only receive a discount of $81 instead of $101. You can still save a bunch of a new MacBook Pro, whether with Retina display or without. The version without -- normally starting at $1,099 -- gets a $101 discount, while the 2014 base configuration with Retina display -- which comes with a 2.6GHz Core i5 and 8GB of RAM -- is $102 less than the normal $1,299 price. Note that Best Buy has a doorbuster for the non-Retina MacBook Pro for $899.99, or nearly $100 less than MacMall's price.
The new Mac mini desktops receive price slashes from $31-$61 depending on the configuration, with the cheapest model (1.4GHz Core i5, 4GB of RAM, 500GB hard drive) dropping in price from $499 to $468. Most iMac versions get a $101 discount, so the low-end edition moves to a $998 price for the weekend. MacMall even discounts the new 5k Retina display iMac, which starts at $2,348 or $151 less than usual for Black Friday. Again, Best Buy is selling the base iMac for even less ($899.99), but it's a doorbuster deal.
The one Mac that isn't included in the Apple store special -- the Mac Pro -- does get discounted by MacMall. You can save $201 off the base configuration, which lowers the price to $2,798. That's still a hefty sum, but it's double the savings you'd get from Micro Center, which has many Mac discounts as well, though some aren't as generous as MacMall provides.
