Apple's Black Friday sale - lame

Don't expect to get any decent discounts; and iPhone or MacBook Air are off limits

As expected, retailers are offering Black Friday sales to jumpstart their holiday sales.

But at Apple, prices of MacBooks, MacBook Pros, iPods, Apple TVs, and some accessories are being offered at mere modest discounts. You can hardly call this a sale. 

For instance, you can get about a 13-inch MacBook (2.4 GHz) for $1498, a 6% discount. You can get a 24-inch iMac (3 GHz) for $2,098, a 5% discount. You can get an iPod Nano for $138, a 7% discount. You can buy an Apple TV for $308, a 6% discount.

What's more, you won't be getting any discounts off of an iPhone or a MacBook Air. Those remain at regular prices.

You can go to the Apple online store or one of its retail stores for these discounts, which last through Friday midnight.

But why bother? Certainly, these discounts aren't compelling enough to drag anyone out of their pajamas and into an Apple store. 

What Apple should start doing - for promotional sales - is to get their App developers to bundle their products for a steep discount. Apple can then keep its hardware prices at regular prices. Now, that's a more compelling sale.

Elsewhere across the Web, here's a useful site for cash-strapped, or bargain-hunting shoppers. It's called TGI Black Friday.