I’ve worked Black Fridays for Ikea in Seattle and the Apple Store in Phoenix. You’d think that such different stores would function very different on Black Fridays, but save for a huge difference in the amount of meatballs consumed, they’re very similar.
Most of the people that come in on Black Fridays are either rabid fans or complete newbies. They saw the sale prices, got all excited thinking they could now afford something and for some reason didn’t totally contemplate just how many people would make it in. The rabid fans are probably cooking breakfast in line, know the security guards and have been saving up for this day for months.
For the rest of us who dare not travel outside our homes today, there are a ton of great sales everywhere. Here are a few of my favorites on items I already have or really, really want.
I have the Dual Alarm Clock Radio, which I received for Christmas last year, in silver and I absolutely love it. Radio, iPhone recharging and some better-than-decent speakers in one little package. My version isn’t portable, but I don’t need it to be. Highly recommend anything from them, especially at today’s prices.
2. Adobe Photoshop Elements
Although I did use Pagemaker to design my high school and community college newspapers, I am in no way skilled in any sort of visual design. I can color correct, crop and resize and occasionally get a little crazy with the clone stamp tool. iPhoto and Preview, great for most pictures, just don’t cut it when you really want to get something done and Photoshop Elements does. I use it for batch processing and minor editing and while I’m sure it can do much more, that’s all I need. It’s over 50% off today.
3. External hard drives
I’m a big fan of cloud computing, but when it comes to backups, you just can’t back up gigs and gigs in any affordable or quick manner online. Having multiple backup hard drives allows me to keep one on site and one somewhere else. Noobs may find this overkill, but lose your laptop hard drive once and you will do anything to prevent that from ever happening again. If you’re a businessperson and you’re not backing up, start.
4. 2nd gen Kindle, Free 3G, 6″
This isn’t actually a Mac product, but the Kindle, and its software, are available for iPhone, Mac and iPad, making any book you buy for Kindle accessible everywhere. I very much enjoy my Kindle I won from Shwaag, and love even more that I can access my books from my Macbook Pro when I want to quote passages for presentations.
5. MacBook Air
If you’re still curious as to what I would like for Christmas, I’m big on the lower-end 13″ MacBook Air. 128 gig hard drive is fine, but I’d like the ram at least doubled to 4 gigs. No need for a SuperDrive, monitor or keyboard, but AppleCare is always a thoughtful gift for a Mac laptop owner.
Have fun on Cyber Monday! Don’t hurt anyone today.
