Apple choices
2 10 2008My old G4 12″ iBook recently started making really loud grinding noises, which seemed to come from the bottom left-hand corner. Sometimes, when I started it, it gave an error message saying that it couldn’t find a hard drive.
Oops. Not good.
A trip to the new Apple Store in Sanlitun village led to me “checking in” my ailing laptop for inspection. Yesterday, the diagnosis was made: a new hard drive is needed.
Hmmm. That’ll cost me 3000RMB. While I was in Singapore recently, I spent SGD244 on a new battery, since the old one had lost most of its capacity. How annoying! But it makes me think that’s probably not worth it, to keep throwing money at an old machine…
OK. Well, I liked that iBook because of its small footprint. However, I’d already stopped carrying it around… my Asus EeePC 700 has filled that niche… I mostly used it as a home media centre, and for video editing. That suggests I should replace it with a Mac Mini, which would cost 5,388 RMB.
I wonder whether Apple offer an educational discount in China? On their web page, I can’t see the icon, which is a little frustrating. In Singapore, I bought a few items from them and took the benefit of the discount, both as a student and, later, a lecturer. If they’re not offering it here, what does that say about their brand positioning in the Chinese market? Are they cutting loose the education sector as too insignificant, and just going for the urban hipster segment?
Well, I need to go to the store this afternoon to retrieve my iBook; I’ll ask them then.
Categories : Apple, Beijing, China, Marketing, Tech







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