web developer
Tom is leaving Yahoo! and taking a break. I really hope he’ll be working on awesome projects in the coming years.
He’s one of the truly remarkable, genuinely inspiring and all-round nice people I’ve had the chance to meet during my time at Yahoo! If you’re interested at all in where the web is going, keep an eye on him and go see him talk if you have the chance to.
There you go I’m all nostalgic and missing Yahoo! now… </sad puppy> :)
I don’t really understand what the fuss is about at the moment regarding iPad prices in Europe.
In the recent years Apple has had prices in Euro pretty much the same as their prices in US Dollar. The iPad is no exception, it retails in the US for $499 and here in France for €499, which is roughly $633. Looks like a rip off. Yet it’s not, let me explain.
First and foremost the most important thing to consider is the VAT, or sales tax as it is known in the US. Prices in the US do not include the sales tax (since its value depends on the state or even sometimes the city where you make a purchase) but do include it in Europe. Here in France the VAT on such products is the same as on most products: 19.6%. This means the price of the iPad before tax in France is about €417, or at today’s rate about $530. So the iPad actually sells here for a net price $100 under what most people think.
Still, that’s $30 or so more than in the US. Let’s keep looking.
Since the end of 2007 France has had a tax on hard drives. Before 2007 only CDs, DVDs and dedicated portable music devices were being taxed this way. This tax came of course from the fantastic work done by music industry lobbyists. So just because you want to have an iPad to browse the web, play games, use apps, or enjoy media that you actually bought, Apple has to pay Universal & co. some money. And not just a few pennies: the tax on an iPad is €15, or about $19. France isn’t the only one in this case, Germany has a similar tax and other european countries may well have, I’m not sure.
Steve Jobs himself gave some brief but accurate advice to anyone ignoring these two facts.
So we’re now at $11 difference, less than a movie ticket. Less than a movie ticket to get your Chinese manufactured toy shipped to Rotterdam (I assume) instead of Apple’s major market, and then dispatched all the way across many countries and delivered to your door, you lazy arse. And you don’t pay extra for that, since Apple pays for whatever UPS charges to deliver across an entire continent.
Add the numerous costs of internationalising its entire product line and retail infrastructure, from the Apple Store websites to the manuals, the support hotlines or even the software itself and you’ll realise that you’re not paying much more than anyone in the US for the privilege of acquiring your new luxurious toy when you leave nowhere near the company creating it or the companies assembling it.
The iPad and generally all Apple hardware products remain expensive, for good reasons too I believe. But complaints on how Europeans are paying much more for new products like the iPad are not justified.