Since March, the old Mac Pro has not been available to buy in Europe as changes in regulations meant that the old Mac Pro no longer complied with EU law. In particular, the large exposed fans of the Mac Pro were the main reason behind the ban — the amendment required fan guards and minor changes to electrical ports.
With the design of the new Mac Pro, Apple once again complies with regulatory requirements. Via MacGeneration, customers in Europe are now receiving shipment notifications with delivery as early as January 14. According to Apple’s online store, customers ordering today should receive their Mac Pro in February.
This morning, the store opened with delivery estimates of December 30th with some variants quoting a January timeframe. Now, it appears the initial allocation has sold out as Apple’s website now reports February shipment for all models.
Although Apple is yet to provide official confirmation, developers are finding that they are now being allocated 100 promo codes per version of their apps. Until today, the limit was 50.
Chief Executive Tim Cook and CFO Peter Oppenheimer are live on Apple’s Q3 2012 call to give opening remarks, and the execs just revealed Apple saw its best quarter ever for U.S. education institution Mac sales. Rutherford County, N.C., for instance, purchased 6,000 MacBook Airs.
Other education-related statistics:
— 14 million iTunes U downloads, 700,000 new schools, and 750 new courses
— iPad 2 in K-12 market particularly strong—nearly doubling y-o-y (Apple sold 17 million iPads in Q3 2012, compared to 9.2 million in Q3 2011).
Oppenheimer said the iPad 2 price drop to $399 helped in education—sold twice as many iPads to U.S. schools as Macs during the quarter. About 11,000 iPads, for instance, were bought in Mansfield, Texas for students and teachers.
Regarding the iPad in education, Cook later added: “We have been very aggressive in this space, and I don’t see changing that.” The chief also noted the sales of the iPad in education are something he has “never seen.” He then addressed the education system’s typically “conservative spending,” but he explained Apple is “not seeing that at all with the iPad.”
Cook further mentioned he saw “hundreds of tablets come to market in the last year and have yet to see any of them gain traction.”
Apple’s financial results conference call to discuss Q3 2012 earnings is now underway, and 9to5Mac is live-blogging as company execs readily detail figures for the quarter. The call’s audio webcast and earnings release are available on Apple’s Investor Relations website.
Apple today lowered the prices of its refurbed iPads across the board. The Original iPad 16GB Wifi is now down to just $279. Meanwhile, iPad 2s are down to starting a base price of just $319, a price drop of $30 over previous $349 clip. Higher capacity iPads are dropped as low as $50 over prices set when Apple debuted the new iPad in March.
New MacBook Pros weren’t the only thing updated quietly in the Apple Store this morning. Apple has updated the whole line of Smart Covers for iPad. You’ll notice the Orange Smart Cover is now gone and Apple has added a lovely Dark Gray Polyurethane model. Apple has added “color matched microfiber lining” to the description of the leather products (gone are the gray lining across the board) as you can see in the images below:
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Apple has also improved the colors of the Smart Covers as well:
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The whole line gets new part numbers but prices have not changed. Notice the subtle color change comparisons below:
If you’ve ever used Google Apps, you’ve seen what kind of power a collaborative, cross-platform word processor can have. Today’s Apple iWork.com Web applications fall far short (though they look much prettier) in terms of functionality. But don’t fret Apple fans! Patently Appletoday shows that Apple is heading Pages toward that same Cloud experience.
While it may or may not be “breakthrough” Apple clearly has plans to put its Pages App/Application into the Cloud. The sooner (WWDC?), the better.