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You are here: MacNN Forums > News > Mac News > Apple's iPad tops Best Buy Xmas season wish list

Apple's iPad tops Best Buy Xmas season wish list
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Oct 24, 2015, 03:56 PM
 
A new US study by retailer Best Buy asking customers what electronic products and other gadget they either asked for or planned to buy as gifts over the upcoming holiday season, Apple's iPad was listed as the top choice, though the survey didn't break out the product by its two different sizes. Two other Apple product lines also made the list, the MacBook (again without distinction of Retina or Air or Pro) in third place, and the Apple Watch in 12th.

Notably, the Fitbit Charge HR Heart Rate and Activity Tracker came in 7th, presumably because the $150 device is substantially less expensive than the more-capable Apple Watch, which starts at $350, and because the Fitbit is intended as a single-purpose device. Behind the iPad, the top five were the Bose QuietComfort noise-cancelling headphones were second, the MacBook line, the Samsung 48-inch Smart 4K Ultra HDTV, and the Sharp 43-inch Smart HDTV with Roku. The Microsoft Surface came in 6th, the Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 was ninth, the Sonos Play:1 wireless speaker was 13th, and the GoPro Hero4 Action Camera rounded out the top 15.



The study confirmed that the 18-34 demographic put electronic devices higher in priority than other groups, and the unsurprising finding that men wanted tech gifts more than women. Men were also more likely than women to buy tech gifts for others. Some 19 people indicated that their top choice of an iPad would likely be a gift for themselves. Fifteen percent of MacBook wishers said the same.
     
Mr. Strat
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Oct 24, 2015, 09:04 PM
 
I have three iPads (2, 4, and Mini 3) - I think that's enough for now. :-)
     
MarkTime
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Oct 25, 2015, 01:14 AM
 
I asked for a wallet.

But, I guess I wouldn't turn down an iPad Pro, if Santa left one under the tree.
     
msuper69
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Oct 25, 2015, 07:26 AM
 
What is this 'Xmas'?
Is 'Christmas' really that difficult to type?
     
coffeetime
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Oct 25, 2015, 10:33 AM
 
It shows iPad still reigns. Ha ha to MS and Android.
     
Charles Martin
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Oct 25, 2015, 06:27 PM
 
You've never heard of Xmas before? Sorry about that, I'll explain it to you.

Xmas is a shorthand expression for Christmas that is routinely used in headlines and elsewhere. Since you seem new to the concept, here's some other common expressions you might see here, as well as their definition. We would not want to confuse you!

Mac: short for Macintosh.

AAPL: the stock symbol for Apple, usually seen in stories about the stock but sometimes referring to the company.

CEO: Chief Executive Officer. We use this one a lot, even though "Chief Executive Officer" isn't that hard to type, it just seems repetitive after a while, and we think people "get it" at this point (well, most people I guess). Abbreviations are very useful for variety!

One more, and it is an important one: don't. It's short for "do not." We use this (and won't, and can't, and even it's!) all the time, even though it barely saves any typing at all! Weird! And don't even get me started on "etc," what does that even mean?!

So you see, abbreviations, nicknames, contractions, slang, lingo and so on aren't (oops, sorry, I meant "are not") just time-savers (like MB/s instead of megabytes per second), they're also used as a simple alternative choice, or to punch up a headline, or to avoid repetition. We do use "Christmas" sometimes (quite often, really), and "gift-buying season" and "holiday season" and "the December quarter" and lots of other variations.

It might also interest you to know that some 30 significant cultural and religious observations in December, some of which involve the giving of gifts! Christmas might be the best-known one to you, but Hanukkah and Winter Solstice pre-date it! Fancy that! We get all kinds of readers, funnily enough, and not just Christians either -- and you can bet they write in all the time to ask why we almost never call it Diwali time or Kwanzaa. And of course Orthodox Christians are always upset we have Christmas happening on the wrong day, but they just have to learn to be more tolerant of other viewpoints in my honest opinion (IMHO which you may see if you ever visit our forums, or, you know, the Internet). There's just no pleasing people who don't want to be inclusive, I guess!

I hope you've learned something today about nicknames, abbreviations, contractions, slang, and lingo -- they're really quite common, it is surprising you were not aware of what Xmas means or hadn't come across it before. It's part of what makes English such a wonderfully rich and diverse language, always evolving! Imagine how dull this world would be if we never changed up our wording and spelled everything out every time.

Thanks (sorry, I mean "thank you") for the great questions. HTH! (argh, I mean "hope that helps!")
Charles Martin
MacNN Editor
     
msuper69
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Oct 25, 2015, 09:50 PM
 
'You've never heard of Xmas before? Sorry about that, I'll explain it to you.
".
You don't get sarcasm do you? Please don't use Xmas; it's Christmas.
     
Steve Wilkinson
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Oct 26, 2015, 12:48 AM
 
@msuper69 - Also note that people don't necessarily mean to offend, be disrespectful, or even flippant by Xmas as opposed to Christmas.

But, I understand where you're coming from as well, with a lot of fairly blatant PC-ification of society (and not the personal computer kind!). Just be sure you send out Christmas cards instead of 'holiday' cards this year, and greet people with Happy Christmas! (it throws people a bit from the common Merry Christmas) or something instead of Happy Holidays. It's the one time of the year when people expect a religious theme.

And actually, Christmas (and Christ) was often abbreviated quite early on because of the Greek chi-rho symbol for Christ... so if you imagine the 'X' is Greek, you're close to a fairly early historical abbreviation used BY Christians.

And, keep in mind that Christmas isn't actually the time of the birth of Christ. There is some debate as to whether pagans, when becoming Christians adapted their various winter celebrations, or whether the pagan celebrations were Christianized to try and reign in the debauchery a bit. And, in fact, Christmas has kind of a sorted history, with it even being outlawed at points (even in early US history) due to the rowdy nature of it. The Charles Dickens type image of Christmas wasn't popular until the late 1800s.

Also, since the etymology of the word Christmas comes more from 'Christ's Mass' I'd probably be concerned about it's use (i.e.; cult of Christianity origins) if I didn't know that isn't what it means in more modern usage.
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Steve Wilkinson
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cgWerks | TilledSoil.org
     
Steve Wilkinson
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Oct 26, 2015, 12:54 AM
 
All that said....

Dear Santa, my iPad 2 had been quite good to me over the years, being a very useful tool (and fun toy!). However, Apple botched things quite badly for it with iOS 8, and while they made a valiant effort to fix things up with iOS 9, it just isn't cutting it. Keyboard input is now so laggy, it's nearly a why-bother situation with it anymore. If you can possibly sneak me onto that 'good boy' list this year, I'd love to see an iPad mini 4 or iPad Air 2 under the tree.
------
Steve Wilkinson
Web designer | Christian apologist
cgWerks | TilledSoil.org
     
Charles Martin
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Oct 26, 2015, 06:09 PM
 
msuper69: apparently it's you that doesn't get sarcasm. You just come off as incredibly naive when you say something dumb like "what's Xmas?" Try a different approach if you want to raise a discussion point with any credibility.

You might want to read Steve Wilkinson's reply for some insight on why we will continue to use (sometimes, and sometimes not) Xmas, along with the rest of the world.
Charles Martin
MacNN Editor
     
   
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