Apple Offers Free iPod Touch To Mac-Buying Students

Apple on Wednesday launched its annual back-to-school promotion offering Mac-buying students and teachers an iPod Touch at no additional charge.

For many years, students and schools have been an important market for Apple, and the company wants to keep it that way with its annual giveaway. This year, students and teachers buying any Mac, other than a Mac Mini or a refurbished model, and an iPod Touch on the same invoice qualify for a $229 online rebate, which is the price of the 8-GB iPod Touch.

In addition, educators and students will still get Apple's education discount, which can amount to as much as $200.

To qualify for the iPod promotion, purchases have to be made before Sept. 8 and buyers have to submit their rebate claims by Oct. 8.

Along with the promotion announcement, Apple also refreshed its entry-level white MacBook with a faster processor and more storage, AppleInsider reported. The $999 system now comes with a 2.13-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, up from 2.0 GHz; and a 160-GB hard drive instead of 120 GB. In addition, the laptop comes with faster memory, 2 GB of 800-MHz DDR2 SDRAM versus 667 MHz.

Despite the promotions, Apple this year is faced with the challenge of convincing students and teachers during an economic recession to pay considerably more for a Mac than a Windows PC. Recent testing by Consumer Reports put the MacBook at the top of each of the laptop categories, but the systems cost from three to four times as much.

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