My brother-in-law John Kuykendall is in the market for a new laptop. One of the products he’s considering is the Apple iBook. He’s primarily looking at the 12-inch iBook while I’ve been nudging him toward the 14-inch iBook with the SuperDrive because that model has a much bigger hard drive and the SuperDrive (DVD-R/CD-RW) enables the use of iMovie and iDVD.
One of the useful websites I stumbled across in the course of discussing iBooks with John is the Mac Buyer’s Guide from MacRumors.com. This site looks at the different Apple product lines from a historical perspective, tells when the last time each line was updated, and gives a purchase opinion (buy/neutral/don’t buy) based on the likelihood of a new product announcement in the near future. There’s no rumor or innuendo on this page, just information about what Apple’s done in the past.
I’m planning on buying an iPod, and I agree that it would be better for me to wait a couple of weeks right now, given that:
- Macworld Expo begins on January 10,
- Apple typically announces new products at this event, and
- Mac Buyer’s Guide recommendation is: “Buy only if you need it – Approaching the end of a cycle”.
The Mac Buyer’s Guide says it’s ok to buy iBooks and iMacs at this time, since they both been updated in the last four months. It’s saying to hold off on purchasing PowerBooks, PowerMacs, eMacs, and xServe servers.
One other note on Apple purchases; I normally steer people to local Apple stores because the purchase experience and support available there is worth a few extra dollars. However, people buying today need to look at the deals at Amazon.com because they are offering $100 to $150 rebates on iBooks at the moment. This makes Amazon about 10 percent cheaper than buying directly from Apple at the moment.