Apple dishes out cheap, tasty Macs 'n slabs to staff

As if the joy of working for Apple wasn't reward enough, all Apple employees will now get a $500 discount off Macs and $250 off iPads.

CEO Tim Cook played Santa Claus at Apple's "Town Hall" meeting with employees in Cupertino yesterday, 9 to 5 Mac reported, handing out the kit discounts to staff as a celebration of Apple's expectation-busting profits for the last quarter.

Even if all of Apple's 63,000 employees worldwide take Cook up on the $750 offer, the cost of the subsidised computers will be spare change to Apple. According to the New York Times the company earned over $400,000 in profit per employee last year.

The chunky discount will be another incentive to work for the tech giant, though as it has been noted recently, not many people do - comparatively speaking. Despite the Republicans praising Jobs for creating more jobs in the party's retort to Obama's State of The Union Address, Apple has a relatively small workforce for its size and profit margins. In comparison, Dell employs about 103,000 and HP 350,000, as CNN pointed out.

Anyway, those lucky Apple-selected few are about to get luckier. Though there are some conditions on the offer: the discount will only kick in in June and will only be available once every three years to employees who have worked over 90 days at Apple. So if you haven't got a job there – here's the application form, or maybe you should start dating someone who does.

We doubt that the same treatment will be extended to Apple's hundreds of thousands of contracted employees in China and Asia, who work long hours making devices for manufacturers such as Foxconn or Pegatron.

But taking home daily wages of $17, the Chinese and East Asian workers are unlikely to be coughing up for the computers, even at a discount. ®