anyone heard of any ipad black friday busters? anybody heard if best buy is doing any specials on them ?

According to this site, no --

BestBuy Black Friday Ad and Best Buy Black Friday Deals for 2010

Does Apple ever run discounts? They control the pricing, not the vendors... Personally, I think they would sell enough to make up the difference in the long run if they would allow for the discounting on high-volume sale days like Black Friday.

Apple themselves does not run discounts per se (they do sell refurbs), but when I bought my iPod Touch (2nd generation) at Radio Shack, they were selling it for the same price as Wal-Mart, but they threw in a $20 gift card. Decision made easy!

Companies bank on Gift Cards. It is the easiest way for them to make money without losing any. Most gift cards are never actually used and will expire after a certain amount of time, giving the company the money in advance without having to give up inventory.

And I have never seen a refurb in an Apple store for sale. So, finding one on a Black Friday, nope.

In CT, gift cards do not expire.

Our attorney general went after companies here who sold cards with short expirations and the law changed to stop that, at least in CT.

Not sure about the rest of the country.

Tom.

ok thanks I don't unnderstand why apple would not at least do some kind of promotion, so I will wait closer to Christmas day to buy the ipad.

Apple does run specials, just not promoted too much since they have little problems selling. Every Fall, you can get an iPod Touch for free with a computer purchase. The sales are there, you just have to know where to look.