14 DAY TRIAL // We can’t put our finger on this, but there’s something going on at Apple’s Deals section. The Mac refurbs area is drowned in MacBook Pros, and three almost-identical configurations have had their images replaced with an Apple shipping box.
There has been a lot of talk surrounding a potential display upgrade on the 15-inch version of the MacBook Pro. Tipsters cited by various publications all agree it’s the 15-incher that Apple has been redesigning. Few said anything about the other two remaining models – the 13-inch and the 17-inch versions.
And, according to one dubious leak, it seems Apple is on track to give the 13-inch MacBook Pro a very modest refresh. Too modest, considering the hype surrounding this year’s rumored refresh.
So, perhaps it is not a coincidence that three 15-inch MacBook Pros selling as refurbs have had their thumbnails replaced with shipping boxes, suggesting that Apple’s technicians are testing the online store’s backend for compatibility with upcoming artwork.
Not to mention that every time a refresh looms, the Special Deals section gets overcrowded with those computer models that are about to get upgraded.
Also quite notable is the fact that these particular systems showing up as shipping boxes feature discounts as high as $610 (€488). To our knowledge, this is one of the biggest refurb-discounts ever made on a MacBook Pro.
As mentioned above, all three computers are nearly identical. They’ve all been shipped in April 2010, they all have the 15.4-inch display, and 4GB of RAM, and they all share the NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M graphics processor with 256MB of GDDR3 memory. The only differentiators are the storage capacity and the processor speed for two of the notebooks.
You know what they say: where there’s smoke, there’s fire. We’re certainly coughing out our lungs right now.
