Apple Begins Promised Employee Discount Program on Macs, iPads

Employee Purchase Program logoApple employees are now eligible for employee discounts of US$500 on Macs and $250 on iPads, discounts that are on top of the 25 percent discount already in place, according to 9to5Mac. Apple CEO Tim Cook announced the plan back in January at a Town Hall meeting, and it went into effect this week.

Employees can take the discounts once every three years and they must have been with the company for more than 90 days. The above-mentioned 25 percent discount remains available once per year.

The $500 discount excludes the Mac Mini and the new Retina Display Mac Book Pro. Given the price of the Mac Mini, the exclusion is mathematically self-explanatory, and the company frequently excludes new releases that are in hot demand (like the MacBook Pro with Retina Display) from its employee discount program. Those devices are made available once supply has caught up with demand.

No word on whether the discount applies to “friends and family,” which allows employees to transfer this benefit to others, but with a once-every-three-years opportunity for this added discount, employees may be less interested in giving it away, even if they could.

In other employee-related news, Apple will also reportedly be giving employees at its Apple Store retail locations raises of as much as 25 percent. The raises will be performance based, and reflect the reality that Apple is one of the top retailers on the planet. Apple also began a matching program for employee charitable donations in late 2011.