Black Friday 2014: The Best Mac Deals

Apple Black Friday product roundupWe have covered iPad deals and iPhone deals, so today's Black Friday coverage will be Apple computers. A computer makes a lovely gift, budget permitting. And with these deals that budget might be more easily convinced. Let's get down to it, boppers:

Basically the tl;dr on today's deals is this: You want a good deal on a new machine, Best Buy is likely your best bet. If you're bound and determined to go to the Apple store, you can get a $100 gift card with a computer purchase, which is nice but you can probably do better. Best Buy deals start Thursday at 5pm and are both in-store AND online, unless otherwise noted. MacMall deals started at 12:01 Pacific Time Wednesday morning and continue through 11:59 pm Friday night.

We'll start with iMacs. Best Buy has the 27 inch 4g iMac (Core i5, 3.2gHz, 8 GB/1 TB) for $1650, which is $150 less than the retail price. MacMall saves you $100 off retail, coming in at $1698. MacMall also lists the only 5k Retina iMac deal I have seen, with $201 off, clocking in at $4198. For a smaller machine in both screen size and price, you can score a 21.5" iMac (core i5, 8 GB/500 GB) for $900 at Best Buy, which is a pretty fab deal since virtually no iMac sports a three digit price tag anymore.

And now, laptops. For the 11-inch MacBook Air (Core i5 1.4GHz, 4 GB/128 GB), Best Buy is sporting what DealMac calls the best deal on an Air EVER, even beating the educational price. Even MacMall comes in at $798. If you want those extra couple of inches, the 13" (Core i5 1.4 gHz, 4 GB/256 GB) gets a $149 price drop at (say it with me) Best Buy, with MacMall at $1098.

On the MacBook Pro with Retina Display, there aren't a lot of deals to choose from. Your best option is a $1299 purchase from Apple Store to get that $100 gift card. Best Buy is selling the same machine for $1350, so if you're already there or can't get to an Apple store, this might be helpful.

Sadly the Mac Mini comes up on virtually nobody's radar anymore, so the only advertised savings I could find (aside from Apple retail gift cards) was a bumped up model of the latest mini (2.6 gHz Haswell, 8 GB/1 TB) for $639.99 with free shipping at B&H Photo, which is $60 off the retail price. There are some other Black Friday deals at B&H, so if you are interested in more than just a new Mac you may want to check them out, the name is a bit misleading since these days they deal in a wide variety of technology items.