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Throwback Thursday: Holiday sales on computers at UCLA

(Daily Bruin archives)

By Keshav Tadimeti

Nov. 23, 2016 3:28 p.m.

When America decided to call the day after Thanksgiving Black Friday, it wasn’t joking around: People are literally beat black and blue – be it through advertisements or Walmart crowds – in their efforts to find the best deals.

Whether it be hot deals on winter clothing or heart-racing 50-percent-off deals in Target, Black Friday is a day for us to empty our wallets and fill retailers’ coffers. And for many of us, the Apple Store is a staple in our Black Friday pit stops.

Apple stores tend to hold a special place in our hearts. After some of us triumphantly leave the iconic glass-paned doors with our pockets empty but our hands full of shiny new technology, we are usually left wondering whether Steve Jobs’ legacy was the revolutionary personal computer or the revolutionary hefty price tag.

These prices aren’t novel. In fact, on Nov. 26, 1986, the day before Thanksgiving that year, the Daily Bruin ran an ASUCLA advertisement for Macintosh desktop computers – specifically the Macintosh Plus and the Machintosh 512K enhanced. And each sported a whopping 800 KB floppy disk storage unit. The Plus was sold at $1,299 and the 512K at $949 – equating to approximately $2,865 and $2,090 in today’s dollar amount. For reference, you can order the latest MacBook Pro with 256 gigabytes of storage today for $1,499 and have it shipped free to your doorstep within one week.

In other words, this year’s Black Friday enthusiasts are in for one heck of a deal compared to their 1986 counterparts.

Before you go off and denounce the Apple of 30 years ago as scheming to get every last buck from consumer pockets, do know that the 1986 products included a bundled offer: If you bought Microsoft Word and an external disk drive with either Macintosh computer, you would have received a free Apple gift box – which included a diskette storage box, screen cleaner, disk-writer pen and MacLightning license – a novel spell checker for its time that let you know what you misspelled while you were typing.

It’s worth noting, though, that a small advertisement for an IBM personal computer was wedged in above the Macintosh ad in the 1986 paper. The IBM computer brandished a cheaper $845 price tag, but required students to visit a store on La Cienega Boulevard in order to make the purchase. On the other hand, the Macintosh computers were readily available at the ASUCLA student store – perhaps indicative of Apple’s growing consumer presence.

Now, 30 years later, Apple is, after falling behind Microsoft for some time, once more the industry leader in the personal computer market. It still offers bundles much like the one in 1986 and it still continues to experiment with innovative technologies, such as the Touch Bar on its new MacBooks.

If it means anything at all, IBM doesn’t sell too many personal computers nowadays.

So when you emerge out of Apple store, black and blue after elbowing your way to and from the cashier and cringing at having spent more than $1,500 on a MacBook, just know that you’re probably getting a pretty darn good deal for your money.

At the very the least, your MacBook comes free with a spell-checker – even if you don’t buy an external disk drive with it.

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Keshav Tadimeti | Alumnus
Tadimeti was the Daily Bruin's Opinion editor from 2017-2019 and an assistant Opinion editor in the 2016-2017 school year. He tends to write about issues pertaining to the higher education, state politics and the administration, and blogs occasionally about computer science. Tadimeti was also the executive producer of the "No Offense, But" and "In the Know" Daily Bruin Opinion podcasts.
Tadimeti was the Daily Bruin's Opinion editor from 2017-2019 and an assistant Opinion editor in the 2016-2017 school year. He tends to write about issues pertaining to the higher education, state politics and the administration, and blogs occasionally about computer science. Tadimeti was also the executive producer of the "No Offense, But" and "In the Know" Daily Bruin Opinion podcasts.
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