Quick, the new Apple MacBook is out. What do you do? Mortgage next month’s paycheck and pre-order it online? Or maybe wait a few months and get a refurbished version? Maybe you type in a school promotional code on the Apple site, and get a measly little discount? Or should you just buy an older model — or just sit on your hands and wait until the price drops? What to do, what to do?
Well, you could try something like this:
So if you can be patient, you stand a much better chance of finding some real deals out there for Apple swag.
Brooklyn-based Dealnews, a deal-hunting site founded in 1997, put together the above graphic to help consumers do just that. The site, which makes its money from advertising and affiliate partnerships, employs about 60 “dealhunters” who scour the web for good buys.
For the above graphic, Dealnews looked at a year’s worth of data and calculated how long it takes a new Apple product to generate an actual deal for consumers. For example, the MacBook Pro 15.4″ with retina display was released in June 2012 with a starting price of $2,199. The site listed a deal two days after its release for $118 off the initial price. Nine months later, the best deal was $350 off.
In other words, he who hesitates… may walk off with a bargain. (Works for “she who hesitates,” too, of course.)
Dealnews offers another tip from its research. If you want the best price for Apple products, don’t buy them from Apple! Instead, wait until a new model comes out, then haunt the MacMalls and Best Buys of the world and buy the previous version days or weeks after the new release. You can thank us — and Dealnews — later.
Image courtesy of Shutterstock
Infographic courtesy of dealnews