Tag: Discounts »

Those out there who are familiar with Apple's movements around this time of year will know that we're just a few days out from Apple's annual one-day only Black Friday shopping event. Set to kick-off this Friday, November 29, the day will mark one of the only times in the year that Apple offers significant discounts on its many hardware products - both online and through its physical retail stores.

While specifics on what hardware we might expect to be discounted come this Friday are still a little sketchy, we can take a quick look at the company's Black Friday events held in previous years for clues as to what type of discounts shoppers should expect to see emerge towards the end of this week.

Last year for example, we saw the firm drop its iPad with Retina Display by a cool $41. Meanwhile, the iPod touch 4th Generation was slashed by $21, the iPad 2 saw an average drop of $31, and the MacBook Pro with Retina Display was available for $101 less than its usual retail price.

[image credit: MacRumors]

As significant as some of the above discounts may sound though, Apple is almost always beaten in its online holiday discounts by third-party vendors. One of those third-party vendors is Target, who will be offering shoppers a free $75 gift card with any purchase of Apple's iPad mini ($279), and the chance to bag themselves a free $100 gift card with the purchase of any iPad, (including the iPad 2 - which starts at $399), when doors finally open this Thursday. The retailer will also be offering $30 gift cards for those who purchase the iPhone 5S (staring at $180) with a 2 year contract.

Retailer Walmart will be running a similar promotion, seeing all shoppers receive a free $75 gift card with the purchase of either an iPhone 5C ($45, with a 2 year contract) or iPhone 5S ($189, with a 2 year contract). Meanwhile, if you opt to buy Apple's original iPad mini (without “Retina” display), you could even grab yourself a free $100 gift card.

The last of the biggest retailers - Best Buy - will be offering Apple's iPhone 5C for the lowest upfront cost we've been able to find at just $48 (a $51.99 savings). The firm will also be slashing the cost of Apple's just-launched 16 GB iPad Air to $450, providing a super-neat saving of $50.

Other smaller retailers, such as RadioShack, will open their doors at 8AM. The purchase of Apple's iPhone 5S, (starting at $200 with a 2 year contract), will see you receive a free $50 gift card, while opting for the iPhone 5C - (starting at $50 with a 2 year contract) - will also see you receive a free $50 gift card. Pick up an Apple TV for $100 on your way and you'll get a free $20 gift card. Plus, those looking for some extra in-store credit to spend on even more Black Friday deals will probably appreciate the chance to bag a $10 RadioShack gift card with the purchase of any $50 iTunes Card. Those looking for some added protection to add to their iOS devices might also be pleased to hear that RadioShack will be offering 30% off all Zagg Screen Protectors, and a further 10% off all Otterbox cases.

Sam's Club will be opening its doors for black Friday super-early, this year. 7 AM to be exact. If you get down there quick though, you might just be able to bag yourself a few $100 iTunes Cards for $79.88 each.

The lowest prices for iOS devices available for Black Friday 2013 are listed below.

EA are well-known for their sales on the App Store. Usually, around some kind of holiday, there's a sale on many EA Mobile games, often dropping games from $6.99 down to $0.99. So what is EA Mobile supposed to do with this time of year, referred to as the "holiday season?" Have an entire month of price cuts and deals, apparently. Thus, EA Mobile has begun their "Daily Deals" program.

The Daily Deals have kicked off with games dropping to the lowest price point possible: free! The first two free games were The Sims Medieval for iPhone/iPod touch, and Shift 2: Unleashed for both iPhone/iPod touch and iPad. As well, Battlefield 2: Bad Company went on sale for $1.99 for iPhone/iPod touch, and $4.99 for iPad; these are 33% and 50% discounts off the regular price, respectively. As per the title of the program, EA is claiming that there will be new deals each day, although for the first weekend of the promotion these deals remained in effect.

EA is offering a web app for users to keep track of the promotion at their EA Daily Deals web page. A new deal will be made available each day at 9:00 am PST (GMT -8), and EA says that they will vary from more free games, to deep discounts on paid titles.

While people love deep discounts on iOS games, and I myself am not excluded, I have to wonder if the current state of the mobile game business, where those who wish to sell games at premium price points are unable to do so because companies like EA can afford to drop their prices to deep discounts like this. In many ways, it's led to situations like the release of the new Tetris game, which relies heavily on IAP monetization, which is something some vocal users have been staunchly against. Massive regular sales on titles like this might be why that kind of situation is now occurring, and why sales like this exist, because it is difficult to sell titles at price points above $0.99, or even free. When EA, one of the companies that can actually sell titles at higher prices is so willing to have these kinds of fire sales with massive promotion, it does not necessarily portend well for the future of premium-priced apps on the App Store.

Have you ever been shopping in a store and wondered if the price that was listed on a product was actually a discount?  Being both a bargain hunter and penny-pincher, this is an issue that plagues me on a nearly daily basis.  But what if you could use the power of the mob to determine if you were looking at a steal or highway robbery?  SnapTag aims to do just that by leveraging the power of both Facebook and Twitter in your favor, by polling your followers about an impending purchase.

This form of crowdsourcing is certainly nothing new to social medial, but SnapTag certainly streamlines the process dramatically.  Easily the best part is that the application is that not only is it tremendously helpful, but completely free as well. We will leave you with a short trailer that details how you can use the tool to make your shopping life much easier.  It is definitely worth a look.



The Dealmap is an app for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad that locates nearby deals and coupons for restaurants, hotels, shopping, events and other businesses.

The app draws from 125 different local sources to provide well over 400,000 different deals from local businesses. Deals comes in the form of discounts. For example, you'll find restaurant deals that offer a $25 meal for $5 and so on. No matter your browsing preference, The Dealmap has you covered. You're able to view a map of your area featuring deals or you can sort through a list of deals instead. You can also save deals under a "Saved Deals" section, which allows you to easily pull up anything you've bookmarked.

The Dealmap also supports Facebook, Twitter and e-mail, allowing you to easily share any deals you happen upon with your friends.

So far, the app has almost 100 reviews on the iTunes App Store with an average rating of 4 stars. You can check out the app for yourself for free on Apple's online store.

Remember the days when Apple 2's were in every school in America? All the little kids used to flock around the gleaming new computers (they were never upgraded, so they quickly became dilapidated old computers) to play their favorite educational game. Some liked Math Blaster, some liked Number Crunchers, but nobody could get enough of the Oregon Trail.

Well the day is coming (hopefully) that every student gets an iPad for the classroom, and Apple is anticipating by offering developers the option to sell their apps at bulk discount. With just a simple checkmark, developers can now opt go sell app bundles of 20 or more for 50% discount.

The adoption of the iPad will certainly take time, but some medical programs are stepping into the tech world. Stanford's Medical School has launched a program to give iPad's to all incoming 1st years, and many other schools are ditching books altogether, using VitalSouce (which has an app coming soon) as their source for books.

Who knows, if more educational entities start giving out iPad's, maybe I'll go back for that Master's degree.

[Source: The Next Web]

.. And the new year App Store sales just keep coming! Yesterday we got a tip from one of the more prominent iPhone development studios on the store, Glu Mobile, who told us that starting today, Friday, January 8th, they'll be staging a new year app blowout sale. Running this coming weekend only, the sale will see the studios well-loved hit titles such as Family Guy: Uncensored, Glyder and Bonsai Blast (among others), drop in price to just $0.99 each!

The sale will end the evening of Monday January 11th. Check out the full list of the apps on sale below, along with a short, quick-fire description of each to help you on your way with the decision to buy ..