Cape Town, 28 Feb 2005
Mac minis enjoyed a sell-out launch at three Apple centres in SA on Saturday, when the entire shipment of about 80 units was sold in three hours.
The new Mac minis are Apple`s entry-level products, sold without a keyboard, mouse or monitor. All three of the Apple centres say their entire consignments were either sold outright or are largely spoken for.
The centres have received back orders for a number of machines, although they are not sure when the next shipments will arrive.
Spurred by the news that the first three people to purchase a Mac mini would get a free keyboard, mouse and an LG LCD monitor and the next seven would get a free keyboard and mouse, potential customers started queuing during the early hours of Saturday morning.
"I was told that some people had arrived on Friday evening and by 7am on Saturday there was a small crowd," says Digicape director Robin Olivier.
Project 3 co-owner Alan Goldburg says there were about 17 people in front of his premises on Saturday morning and the crowd grew substantially by opening time at 9am.
Sandton-based Cool Apple Buddies store manager Ryan Shein says about 100 people were in front of his shop by opening time and the atmosphere was jubilant.
"It was almost carnage once the store opened. The high-spec (1.4GB) Mac Minis went first followed by the 1.25GB. We also sold a lot of peripherals, at discounted prices," he says.
The 1.4GB Mac mini retails for R5 419 and the 1.25GB version goes for R4 559. The iPod Shuffles retail for R849 for the 512MB unit and R1 269 for the 1GB version.
The two Cape Town Apple centres received about 21 Mac minis and the Johannesburg operation received about 40 units and each had about 14 new iPod Shuffles to sell.
"The Shuffles did not sell as well as I would have thought, but that is because not much advertising was done around them. However, people were very interested in them," says Goldburg.
He adds that while a number of people were attracted to the store through curiosity about the Mac mini, they bought some of the higher-spec and higher-priced G5 workstations instead.
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