“After recruiting Siri to bad-mouth the iPad, launching an iPad comparison site, and picking on the iPad mini, Microsoft now wants to buy your Apple tablet,” Tom Warren reports for The Verge.
MacDailyNews Take: We love the smell of Microsoft desperation in the morning!
“The Surface maker has launched a promotion at its brick-and-mortar stores in the US that lets iPad 2, iPad 3, and iPad 4 owners trade in their tablets for at least a $200 gift card,” Warren reports.
MacDailyNews Take: You know, those empty areas inside a handful of malls that look like Apple Retail Stores as if designed by blind community college freshmen sucking on the blue keg.
Warren reports, “The devices have to be ‘gently used’ and the offer is only available in Microsoft Stores in the US and Canada, and not online. The deal is designed to convince iPad owners to switch to Surface tablets. Microsoft was forced to cut its Surface RT price by 30 percent worldwide after slow sales of the devices and a $900 million write-down. The company has also cut its Surface Pro tablet by $100 recently.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: In related news, the local sewage plant is offering at least $200 for anyone willing to trade in their bottles of Dom Pérignon…
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Tom R.” for the heads up.]
I wouldn’t even trade my empty iPad box for a Microsoft credit
I wouldn’t trade in my iPod even if Ballsmear himself offered a Lapdance….eww…I feel sick.
If his tongue is out, stand up and end that Lapdance fast!
Agree and will add my iPad is priceless. Nothing would persuade me to part with it and give it to the devil.
A used iPad, depending on the model, is also worth more than $200.
A very convoluted way for Microsoft employees to get their hands on some iPads. No need for subterfuge. Just go ahead an buy iPads at the store like everyone else.
Ouch!
Microsoft is going to earn a truckload of money, not by selling their own tablets that nobody wants, but by selling those returned iPads thru intermediaries (i.e., MS employees in disguise).
That remains to be seen. I don’t see any lines forming for people running to give up their iPads. How can they earn a “a truckload of money” without a supply of iPads?
Imagine the summit meeting that generated such wet collar panic.
Two hunnerd dollars?!? And it doesn’t have a keyboard!
Actually Microsoft real plan is take people iPad to the back the store and stick a Microsoft logo on the iPad home button , then call it surface, and sell that to the next customer with the gift card~ well play Microsoft !
You hit the nail on the head!
MicroSoft Surface proving that shit can have a kickstand. The best innovation on the thing is the skin cutting kick stand. If you try to re-enact their amazing dance from their wonderfully produced commercial expect to bleed. If you buy one expect to bleed. New plan kill the surface and turn it into a portable touch screen Xbox.
How about loading android on it? Get your kid one for Christmas so they have a reason to hate you when they grow up.
Yeah, right.
So sad Microsoft. So sad.
you should have seen the apologists defending this move on cnet. as if it was msft’s business strategy all along to cut the price of the RT by 50% and offload the unsold inventory to school all along. hilarious
those of us who have been paying attention to the same tired business model of shoehorning a full blown desktop OS on less than mediocre hardware specs in a tablet pc saw the writing on the wall when msft announced the surface DOA.
at least their previous forays into selling tablet pcs did not cost them nearly 3 billion dollars in less than a year.
What irks me is that I am constantly correcting family friends who read CNET, ZDNET and believe that crap. I don’t blame them because those are the sites they know about or told by work people to read. When they see 10 articles bashing Apple and only 2 articles that we know are truthful, who do you think they believe first?i have to prove it them personally and point them to sites to get the facts straight.
oh man I am all cnet, you can see the battles I have one against the FUD parade from the iHaters. people over there still M$FT saved APPL in the 90s, instead of M$FT settling out of court for piracy of the lisa, Macintosh and wholesale theft is QuickTime codecs. most of the cnet-ers info is completely wrong APPL from the 90s to present day.
if anyone is curious or want to provide support, my username is the same over at CNET. I have had some epic wins on quite a few trolls over there.
Easy now MDN. Our local community college (Forsyth Technical Community College) has outperformed many prestigious, 4 year, nationally recognized commercial interior design programs. Don’t be hatin’.
The dancing monkey seems determined to kill off M$ before the door hits him in the ass on his way out.
iPad2 goes from about $170-$270 Any idiot stupid enough to trade in an iPad3/4 or a decent iPad2 for $200 off a surface doorstop deserves what he/she gets.
I think this is Microsoft’s new profit strategy. Dupe someone into taking $200 of inventory off their hands, in return for getting their iPad which MS can then turn around and sell for a profit.
Have to admit its a better idea than anything they’ve tried before.
Fisher Price Tablet
Don’t be insulting Fisher Price!
Well, goldurnit and tarnation! My iPad 1 doesn’t qualify me for M$ 200, so I guess I don’t get a cheapo Surface. Hold on though! all I’ve gotta do is wait a few months and MS will get to slash the price again.
Pity I wouldn’t take a Surface as a present.
If Jed Clampett of ‘The Beverly Hillbillies” were reading this, he’d say, “Pitiful! Just Pitiful.”
Then in reference to MS CEO Steve Ballmer, Jed would say, ‘One of these days, I gotta have a loooooooooong talk with that boy!”
The surface couldn’t even carry my iPad’s jock!
( a little Mike Tydon inside humor. Sorry. )
They had to write off $900 million the last time. Now it sounds like they’re going for the full billion.
In related news, Apple has announced an offer: Trade in two Surface Pros, and get……………. A bag of marbles!!!
Wow!!! An obvious sign of desperation… A moment to say goodbye to Microsoft !
Brilliant strategy, brilliant, I like it, I like it a lot. Does Balmer really have to go, I mean with a strategy like this, he needs to be at Microsoft for a little while longer, puhlease.
∑ = This a Microsoft strategy to buy up iPads for cheap so their staff don’t have to work on filthy Surface clunkers.
Maybe Microsoft isn’t so stupid. But obviously they still live off the blood of the living.
Oh, and notice how this strategy means I am highly likely to win my bet that Microsoft won’t withdraw their loss leader Surface crap from the market until next summer! Ha Ha Hannah! 😉
Spend Microsoft! Spend SPEND SPEND!
Microsoft needs some iPads to bring in customers into their retail stores. Every time I walk past the Microsoft store in one of the malls nearby there are virtually no shoppers in there. Contrast that to the Apple store in the same mall which is literally packed with customers!
Well said ……. My sentiments exactly. MS lost this battle long time ago like Rim catching up new trends.
What! No concert tickets?
Okey, here is the deal MS. You can buy my iPad 2 for at least $200. But instead of credit towards a Surface, you give me a surface for free, and I save the $200 for the next generation iPad.
I’ll also do you a favor and give away the free surface to one of my friends as a Christmas gift.
Sound good?
Not for $200,000,000……. Well, maybe for that much. Then I’d just go buy new iPads for all of my family & friends.
All those things is a bit desperate yea. Microsoft always launches comparison sites… It’s a standard defence tactic for them. Microsoft should scrap the surface and start all over. Do an Apple.