how about ipad? is it international warranty or local?

IIRC, iPad warranty is international.

@myjunk you will have that happen when the person / company is buying the Mac and re-selling it to you.
How Apple tracks the date of sale is simple, all authorised partners must report their sales via serial number.
So if I am an authorised partner and sell the Mac directly to you, then the receipt I issue to you will be accepted by Apple for warranty verification.
If I sell it to Mr X (who isn’t an authorised partner) and he sells it to you 5-7-10 days later, that’s too bad, the warranty starts the day the authorised partner reports the sale.
I had one experience where I sold a display to a customer, it had been on our shelf for nearly 7 months and we had to call in to AppleCare to verify the customers warranty start date

Yap... a lot of us dun care as Long as the price is cheaper and makes sense despite losing like 2weeks to 1 month of warranty start.

My initial question was how they managed to get such good prices. Possibly they are purchasing and re-selling educational discount Macs? (How would one know?)

yes it is. i have bought iPhones, iPad, Macbook from this guy. so far I have no issue. you can always opt for cash on delivery. their office/shop is in jalan imbi

if we could find out *how* none of us would be here ... we'd be doing the same thing.

Maybe they have a supplier / distributor to give them volume discounts?
yes its also possible that they're reselling educational Macs... its not possible to find out unless you have a friend who works inside Apple and can trace the purchase history of that particular Mac.

one this to take note. those 4g band in usa may not be compatible in malaysia, end up u can only use those low speed band, u curse. my fren got one from hong kong before, the 4g speed less than 2mbps all the time due to only have band that can connect to our slow 4g, the fast 4g that hong kong one no support