If you are looking for a great day-to-day MacBook, it’s hard to look beyond the MacBook Air. 2020’s MacBook Air M1 is still available at $999 from the Apple Store. The Air’s capability will serve a general audience thanks to Apple Silicon.
This leaves the 14-inch and 16-inch “professional” MacBook Pro laptops to go for if you need the power. And that power will be more evident in the M2 Pro and M2 Max variants of the MacBook Pro. Unfortunately, while the geekerati were expecting them to arrive in October, Apple had other ideas and made the shock decision to delay the laptops until at least the first calendar quarter of 2023.
What to do about MacBook Pro sales in the final quarter of the year? Apple had made another decision… to quietly offer discounts until the new macOS laptops go on sale.
Apple Macbook Pro 16 inch with touchbar. Focus on MacBook Pro logo
While Apple does not have the same zeal in promoting discounts for Black Friday, there have been several moves that show the company working harder than normal to keep turnover on the MacBook platform as high as possible.
One of those is in the retail space, with small enterprise customers being offered discounts of up to ten percent on the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models. Those who need to move up to the professional MacBook Pro models may have been waiting for the M2-equipped models over the summer. Still, Apple would like you to keep buying the older M1 model that will shortly be superseded.
While there may not be any visible discounts for consumers, those looking for a better offer on Apple’s website know to head to the refurbished section of the store (although you might be quicker using a search engine for the link, Apple doesn’t make it easy to spot in the user interface). Here you’ll find the same larger MacBook Pro models with discounts of up to twenty percent.
Given the refurb MacBooks generally have a ten percent discount (all backed up by the same warranty and options for AppleCare as a brand new machine.), that’s an extra discount for consumers looking at the larger MacBook Pro laptops.
The mystique around Apple extended to its pricing, and browsing through the Apple Store shows very little out of the ordinary. Yet just below the surface, Tim Cook and his team are quietly offering more discounts to boost MacBook sales during the last quarter of the year. In other years, this would be the role of a new release; with the delay to the M2 Pro and M2 Max variants of the MacBook Pro, Apple has decided to lean more into the brave new world of offering discounts.
If you want as much power as possible, you’ll have to wait for the M2 family. If you need a lot of performance right now, then you’ll be looking at the M1 choices, with the added temptation of those discounts. Apple has made its decision. Now you have to make yours.
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