Apple's Red Friday Sale

Similar to Black Friday in the United States, Apple will be having Red Friday Sale on this coming Friday 25th January 2013 to celebrate the upcoming Chinese New Year.

Same as the Black Friday Sale, Apple will be offering one day discounts on Macs, iPads, iPods and accessories but not on iPhones. This Red Friday Sale is only available in Asia countries like Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Philippines, China, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

There is no details on the deal but it should be same as previous year with discounts of up to 8% on iPads, 10% on iPod Touch, and a flat discount of RM 311 on all models of MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and iMac. Free shipping will be offered as well.

If you're planning to get an iPad or other Apple products, remember to logon to Apple Store on this coming Friday to enjoy the discount. Happy shopping!

Apple Store Black Friday Sale

In the United States of America, Black Friday is the name given to the day after Thanksgiving Day, traditionally the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. On this day, most major retailers open extremely early and offer promotional sales to kick off the holiday shopping season.

Apple is also giving discount to some of its products through Apple Store including iPad 4 and iPod touch 5G. Below table lists out some of the products on sale:

No	Product	Normal	Discounted	MY
1	iPad 4 16GB Wifi	USD 499 (RM 1547)	USD 458 (RM 1420)	RM 1499 (Estimated)
2	iPad 2 16GB Wifi	USD 399 (RM 1237)	USD 368 (RM 1141)	RM 1199
3	iPod touch 5G 32GB	USD 299 (RM 927)	USD 268 (RM 831)	RM 1049
4	iPod touch 4G 16GB	USD 199 (RM 617)	USD 178 (RM 552)	RM 699
5	iPod nano	USD 149 (RM 462)	USD 138 (RM 428)	RM 529

The discount is really a lot compared to the selling price in Malaysia especially for iPod. You can see the full list of the products here. I wonder when Malaysia Apple Store will have similar promotion?

iPod Touch 5th Generation

Apple has launched iPod Touch 5th generation in October and it is already available in Malaysia. This is the most iPhone like iPod Touch ever made by Apple.The iPod Touch 5G comes in a 4-inch Retina display that is exactly the same with iPhone 5 and it is even thinner than iPhone 5 by 1.5 mm.

iPod Touch 5G is powered by A5 chip, the same chip that is used to drive iPhone 4S. The front & back camera are also major upgrades as compared to the previous generation of iPod Touch. It seems that Apple is intending to make iPod Touch 5G as an alternative to Point-and-Shoot camera. Every iPod Touch 5G comes with a strap that Apple calls the loop to let you take the iPod just like a camera.

This is a quick comparison for the 3 new products of Apple:

Category	iPod Touch 5G	iPad Mini (Wifi)	iPhone 5
Processor	A5 chip	A5 chip	A6 chip
Dimension	Height: 123.4 mm Width: 58.6 mm Depth: 6.1 mm	Height: 200.0 mm Width: 134.7 mm Depth: 7.2 mm	Height: 123.8 mm Width: 58.6 mm Depth: 7.6 mm
Weight	88 g	308g	112 g
Display	4-inch Retina display	7.9-inch	4-inch Retina display
Resolution	1136 * 640	1024 * 768	1136 * 640
Back Camera	5 MP	5 MP	8 MP
Front Camera	1.2MP photos 720p HD video Backside illumination	1.2MP photos 720p HD video Backside illumination	1.2MP photos 720p HD video Backside illumination
Video Recording	1080p HD video recording	1080p HD video recording	1080p HD video recording
Earphones	Apple EarPods	N/A	Apple EarPods with Remote and Mic Storage and travel case
Talk Time	Music playback time: Up to 40 hours Video playback time: Up to 8 hours Charging times: Fast charge 2 hours (80% capacity), full charge 4 hours	Up to 10 hours of surfing the web on Wi‑Fi, watching video, or listening to music	Talk time: Up to 8 hours on 3G Browsing time: Up to 8 hours on LTE Up to 8 hours on 3G Up to 10 hours on Wifi Standby time: Up to 225 hours
Price	32GB RM1049 64GB RM1399	16GB RM1099 (est) 32GB RM1399 (est) 64GB RM1699 (est)	16GB RM2199 (est) 32GB RM2499 (est) 64GB RM2799 (est)

You can see from the table that iPod Touch 5G has almost all the features like iPhone 5 except it only has Wifi connection and unable to make phone calls but the price of iPod Touch 5G is 58% cheaper. If you compare iPod Touch 5G with iPad Mini, you would notice that iPad Mini is actually overpriced with a screen that is not Retina display.

The selling price of iPod Touch 5G in the US is USD 299 (RM 900) but it is selling at RM 1049 in Apple Store. Since iPad 2 is selling for RM 1199 now,  if the upcoming iPad Mini is priced at RM 1099, it will affect both iPad Mini and iPod Touch sales. I hope that by the time iPad Mini is launched in Malaysia, the iPod Touch 5G price would be revised to RM 900.