Re: Re: Re: Re: cant you just order in the us?
Originally posted by Hector
The $364 figure is how much we pay for ipods in the uk, to give americans an idea how much more it costs.
they may spend more on there Privet health care but If you add the uk's privet and NHS spending per % of GDP is higher than the US's
Id rather live in the uk due to the fact that I know if I break my leg it wont break the bank
The uk is now a part of europe, europe has a way higher GNP than the U.S. I know where I'd rather live
Your iLife comment I totaly agree with thats the same point I was makeing with the ipod mini You must have completely missread it
sorry about the severly OT post but I had to state the facts.
OT: 2gb ipod's will never happen, 8gb minis and price reduction imminent in my opinion
Yeah I was agreeing with your post about the price differences, it's just then you went on to imply you thought it was all due to extra taxes in the UK that are spent on services that they don't have in the UK, and I was pointing out that acctually the price difference is huge even taking into account the only tax difference I'm aware of (although of course there may be other taxes that Apple encounters that are not so transparent), and so the price differences aren't perhaps as explainable as all that.
The politics is really irrelevant, it's just you were talking like you thought it was okay that the prices were so much higher because we have NHS etc, I was just pointing out it really isn't as simple as that and basically just trying to say we shouldn't write off poor pricing. (btw, *suprise surprise* (by that I mean the NHS discourages private health care spending) the UK only spent 1% of it's GDP on private healthcare in 1997 verses the US's 7.4%. This means the UK spent a total of 6.8% of GDP on health, with the US spending 13.9%. Also their GDP is far higher than the EUs - according to
http://www.theglobalist.com/nor/GlobalistPapers/2001/07-18-01.shtml in 2000 their GDP was 9% higher than the EUs. Accoring to The Economist, America's GDP grew at 7.2% vs. 1.6% in Eurozone (I think those are annual rates based on Q3 2003). Sorry I know this is irrelvant just thought I'd put it in for interests sake, the point is:
Apples prices are bizzarly more expensive in the UK compared to US and I think they should try and do something about it because they must be running really inefficiently in Europe or something.
My iPod prediction - cheaper 2GB ones because anything >4GB looks excess for someone for something cheap. Would be great for upgrades when they run out of space. Hopefully they may revise them before they're even out in the UK, but I think they'll do that based on sales rather than anything we say or think.
I think the iLife pricing is fair (an idea for ppl annoyed might be wait till next version of Mac OSX is out since you'd buy it anyway and it'll be included in that I'd have thought since £99 is a little steep for yearly slight incremental updates anyway), but price differences between countries is bizarre (how can mailing a CD around the world cost that much?!?)
