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Panther No Longer Pre-Release?
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Re: vis-a-vis Shelf Lag
{quote]Further, if this does happen, can I go ahead and order my new Powerbook after the announcement and expect a set of 10.3 disks to arrive at some later date? [/QUOTE]
Watch this space for further details....
Sure it's possible, but you can be that selective only if you have a finished product in your hands, ready to go. If your product's still in development - even in these late stages - you must either wait for it to complete, or give a date SO far in advance that you're (almost) certain to make it.
{quote]Further, if this does happen, can I go ahead and order my new Powerbook after the announcement and expect a set of 10.3 disks to arrive at some later date? [/QUOTE]
Watch this space for further details....
Originally posted by iHack
prices that don't subsidise US buyers - check
Let's compare a stock 17" Powerbook:
US Apple store (online): $ 2999,--
And to name few Euro prices (online):
German store � 3479,-- (VAT 16%) = US $ 3995
UK store GBP 2399,-- (VAT 17,5) = US $ 3983,--
Dutch store: � 3568,-- (VAT 19%) = US $ 4097,--
Belgian store � 3629,-- (VAT 21%) = US $ 4167,--
That's a European mark-up of about 33%. I checked G5's too - they take a 25% mark-up. Cross-Atlantic shipping must be very expensive...
Hey, when I give myself a budget of $ 1100,00 I can buy a ticket for me and my wife, from Amsterdam to New-York and check into a nice hotel for a few days. When I buy my PowerBook while I there, I can still save money! Seems like a nice way to surprise her
BTW, Japanese store 379800,-- (VAT ?) US $ 3397,-- equals + 13% Hey, what would a ticket to Tokyo cost...
M.
Sorry, couldn't check where are you from, but what you´ve posted iss totaly wrong.
I´m living in Germany and just ordered a new Powerbook 15". I've paid 2650 Euros.
In all european countries the prices are already WITH taxes. So its not + 16% but - 16%. That´s quiet a difference.
I think in the USA you are not paing taxes when ordering online, are you? That´s different in germany. We have to.
PS: you said some 10,000,000 in the netherlands are living under the sea.
I don´t speak english very well - as you can see - but do you mean multipel 10 million people? you know there are only 16 million people living in the netherlands? *g*
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ohh, sry, just read your post more carefully. you don't put the taxes on them. just the ¤ - $ difference. But without our 16% tax the prices are the same.
Prices are for the 17" powerbook w/ superdrive. I'm from The Netherlands, in a city just east of Amsterdam.
I checked the mentioned online Apple stores before I posted, and took the exchange rate from x-rates.com. You're right, I ignored the lack of US VAT. The Euro prices without VAT are the same as the dollar prices, except that 1 = $ 1,146 as of today (has been as high as $ 1,19). This is difference of 14,6%, which fluctuates with the exchanges rates.
VAT in Germany is 16%, I believe, which explains the other half of the mark-up. As a tourist you can buy tax free in the US, and you can't in your own country, so I think it's fair to compare the prices I did (although it does exaggerate the difference a bit for dramatic purposes)
Just water management trivia.
Some 2/3 of the Dutch population, which indeed is about 16 million, lives in areas that are lower than mean sea level (we don't really live under the sea). Actually, 2/3 of the country would be flooded twice daily at high tide, if it weren't for the dikes and dunes. The highest population densities are in the west, which is the lowest. In Rotterdam, the lowest point is about 7.5 below mean sea level. In my basement, where I'm sitting right now, floor level is more or less equal to the water level on the other side of the wall, which I know is 5,7 m below mean sea level. Any water surplus (e.g. from rain) is pumped out to sea with huge pumping stations. The one closest to my house pumps 3100m3 per minute, at peak capacity. Thank god for solid dikes and big pumps! [edit: changed the pumping capacity and added a sentence]
Re: vis-a-vis Shelf Lag
usually, i think if it's already been said when it will be released and if you buy it on that day, it may already have it installed.
sure, I know he was talking about the 17inch model.
But i paid 2650 Euros on the 15inch model and if you take the 16 percent taxes off the german price for the powerbook and put the 8 percent us taxes to this you get 2625 Euros. That's only a very small difference.
But i paid 2650 Euros on the 15inch model and if you take the 16 percent taxes off the german price for the powerbook and put the 8 percent us taxes to this you get 2625 Euros. That's only a very small difference.
Originally posted by iHack
prices that don't subsidise US buyers - check
Let's compare a stock 17" Powerbook:
US Apple store (online): $ 2999,--
And to name few Euro prices (online):
German store 3479,-- (VAT 16%) = US $ 3995
UK store GBP 2399,-- (VAT 17,5) = US $ 3983,--
Dutch store: 3568,-- (VAT 19%) = US $ 4097,--
Belgian store 3629,-- (VAT 21%) = US $ 4167,--
That's a European mark-up of about 33%. I checked G5's too - they take a 25% mark-up. Cross-Atlantic shipping must be very expensive...
Hey, when I give myself a budget of $ 1100,00 I can buy a ticket for me and my wife, from Amsterdam to New-York and check into a nice hotel for a few days. When I buy my PowerBook while I there, I can still save money! Seems like a nice way to surprise her
BTW, Japanese store 379800,-- (VAT ?) US $ 3397,-- equals + 13% Hey, what would a ticket to Tokyo cost...
M.
There's a few flaws here:
1. If you are going to base your numbers on price differences, you need to either put in US taxes or take out European taxes. It'll make the price differences much smaller.
2. The cost of doing business for a US company in the EU is higher than selling to US customers. Factor that in, and the price delta become miniscule.
3. You're treating the prices as absolute numbers when in fact they are based on different currencies. Factor that in to your calculations, and again, the margin in small.
I agree with the general sentiment that Apple needs to do more for non-US customers. They are 50% of Apple's installed base, and they are certainly not treated that way.
But let's keep the gripes rational. It's always comical when one reads things like, "Apple sucks because they won't release iTMS in the EU," when it is the EU laws preventing it. Your comment that EU buyers are subsidizing US buyers fall into that line of thinking.
When I would buy in the US I can buy tax free as a tourist, when I buy from my local apple store, I have to pay VAT. The VAT account for about half the difference.
What causes the difference in the cost of doing business? I'm just asking because I would like to know
Re: Re: The 64-bit Issue
All versions of Mac OS X have been able to handle more than 4GB of memory in the kernel. This is necessary for the virtual memory system to work in the first place (imagine 4 running programs, each using 1 byte more than 1 GB of memory - that by itself requires being able to handle greater than 32-bit address space at some point).
The difference is that with the G5 we have the first system controller that is capable of working with more than 2GB of actual RAM. So what's new with the G5 is the ability for the hardware to address more than 2GB of real RAM.
I suspect support for that is already built into 10.2.7, but unless someone wishes to give me a G5 loaded up with 8GB of RAM to test, I can't say for sure . So while you can't have 64-bit application memory spaces yet, you can certainly use any and all of the RAM that you can install in those G5 boxes, just not with one application (easily).
All versions of Mac OS X have been able to handle more than 4GB of memory in the kernel. This is necessary for the virtual memory system to work in the first place (imagine 4 running programs, each using 1 byte more than 1 GB of memory - that by itself requires being able to handle greater than 32-bit address space at some point).
The difference is that with the G5 we have the first system controller that is capable of working with more than 2GB of actual RAM. So what's new with the G5 is the ability for the hardware to address more than 2GB of real RAM.
I suspect support for that is already built into 10.2.7, but unless someone wishes to give me a G5 loaded up with 8GB of RAM to test, I can't say for sure
. So while you can't have 64-bit application memory spaces yet, you can certainly use any and all of the RAM that you can install in those G5 boxes, just not with one application (easily).
1. If you check my post I did put the tax on but you have to acknowledge that in USA you can get it tax free online as I said amazon. the difference is around 600$ with the US tax at 8%.
2. Apple hardly does bussiness per se in the EU. They do not have a store presense only a web site they have as far as I know only one assembly in Ireland and they only have some tech support which much of it is done through by outsourcing and for which they DO collect a heavy premium because if you check UK and US Applecare prices the difference is ridiculous.
3. EXACTLY the Euro presently is at 1.15 per dollar so it means even if numerically the prices were exactly the same then Apple collects 15% more dollars on a EU sale than on the US sale. So every single extra "numerical" euro paid in EU or UK is a Euro too much. UK currency has been at 1.6 for long time but Apple still seems to be working with a 1.5 exchange rate.
4. As about the iTunes EU legislation on copyrights is less strict than the US legislation. So this is hardly a reason for a delayed iTunes. MS got around an EU music store so EU legislation can hardly be blamed although Apple does not have the whole blame there either......
Before you try and defend pricing policies please get an economics 101 course please and if you dont feel like going back to school just get your facts straight
quick question, lets say hypothetically that it does come out October 24th. That's the ship date of my g5, how probably do you think it is of me getting that installed? or a coupon, that'll be kinda b.s. if i dont get it and i get screwed, when i might as well cancell it, and rebuy a new one, that will get a later est ship date.
Re: The 64-bit Issue
Ouch... sucks to be an Apple coder right now... this sounds about as painful as what MS is having to do with VPC (go through and find all the places they used psuedo-little-endian mode and change it to use a swap instead).
Originally posted by Rincewind42
A 32-bit operating system can give a single program, at most, 4GB of memory. A 64-bit operating system can give a single program, at most, 16 EB of memory. The Mac OS X build that is currently running on the PowerMac G5 (10.2.7) allows each program to access 4GB of RAM. This is because all of the pointers used in such programs are 32 bits. It also allows programs on this machines to use the full width of the G5's registers, and thus manipulate 64-bit integers without penalty.
Q: Why can't we just change the pointer size (to 64-bits) and get 16 EB memory spaces?
A: Because there is more to the change than just your code. Mac OS X (as all operating systems) provides you with a HUGE volume of precompiled code for your program to use. These libraries are necessary for your programs to even start running. And all of these libraries are built (currently) expecting 32-bit pointers. There is no way for these libraries to start dealing in 64-bit pointers without being recompiled.
Q: Ok, so we need to update our libraries. So lets just have them all just work with 64-bit pointers. Problem solved right?
A: No. Unfortunately, if you just change all your libraries to expect 64-bit pointers then your 32-bit programs will break when those libraries return a pointer that is out of range for them. So what you have to do instead is have two different libraries, one that handles 32-bit programs, and one that handles 64-bit programs, this way each kind of program gets the kind of pointers that it expects.
Q: Ok, so we need 2 versions of each library. So lets start cranking. Two weeks tops right?
A: Unfortunately no. When you create such an incredible additional mass of code, you need to test it. And testing it all takes a huge amount of time. It's hardly practical to expect it to happen quickly. Yes, much of Mac OS X was designed to be easily moved from 32 to 64 bits without much difficulty, but there are many edge cases where things don't quite work out of the box, either due to common usage of an API, or exceptional circumstance around that API.
For example, many APIs take a reference constant that is passed to a callback so the callback knows what context it is being called with. Unfortunately for some older APIs these reference constants are defined as 32 bit integers, but common practice has been to use them as pointers. So in moving to a 64 bit memory model, these APIs would need to be redefined to use 64 bit integers AND the programmers using them would need to check their code to make sure that they do the right thing when passing in the pointer (C/C++ doesn't allow you to pass a pointer as an integer without explicitly changing the data type. Code written for passing a 32 bit integer would thus clip your 64 bit pointers).
This is just one of many issues that would cause the testing time of new 64-bit libraries to take a LONG time. And before someone says it, no that doesn't make Carbon implicitly harder to move to 64-bit than Cocoa =). All of the newer, recommended Carbon APIs already use a pointer type for the reference constant instead of an integer
Hopefully all this will clear up why it is a difficult task to add support for 64-bit memory spaces to an OS. Hopefully it has also put across that it should not be as difficult a task as it has been for that other operating system.
Ouch... sucks to be an Apple coder right now... this sounds about as painful as what MS is having to do with VPC (go through and find all the places they used psuedo-little-endian mode and change it to use a swap instead).
IT'S AN AMERICAN COMPANY!
You don't hear me whining about the Germans paying less for a BMW, or about the Japanese paying less for everything Sony makes!
Besides, it seems that your silly VAT makes the difference to you. So blame your own governments.
There is no university that can satisfy me. And I unfortunately "need" a college education to get a good career. It's a cartel, I tell you.
Wildcat, eh? Somehow I doubt that's the real code name. It should instead be an actual feline species.
By that criteria, Apple didn't hardly even do business in America until a few years ago.
Can you buy a Mac in Europe? Apple does business in Europe. Can you buy a Mac in North Korea? Not too easily, because Apple doesn't do business there.
I'm sure Apple wants to hire staff just to check the exchange rates every morning and adjust prices accordingly.
Microsoft is willing to allow stricter DRM than Apple is.
I'm glad to report that Econ 101 is another one of the redeeming qualities of going to college. So is getting an A in it, so far.
And you shouldn't because BMWs are not cheaper in Germany than in USA and Sony products cost about the same as they do in Japan.
I am aware of that but Apple as far as I am aware is taxed in the USA by the US taxing laws right? My point was that Apple hardly has any substantial number of emplyees in EU apart form the Irish assembly and some tech support most of which it outsources. So Apple really bears very small burden of red tape in EU. By no bussiness I meant they hardly own or operate something in the EU where EU laws would make that something more expensive to operate than in the US. Their bulk of staff - plants - headquarters is in US - EU business law hardly affects them.
If Apple sells half their Macs outside US then yes they do have enough people to check exchange rates. My point was not that however. My point was that in the price equation you have to use that variable as well. And as of right now for the same numerical value EU citizens pay 15% more dollars.
Sure enough but my point was that EU law did not stop MS and EU law does not stop Apple so he should not blame EU law.
Feel free to blame Record Lables practices.
Congratulations for your success and I hope you will learn also about PPP if you haven't already. In terms of PPP most european countries pay a premium of 30% - 80% on their Apple products.
Re: Re: The 64-bit Issue
In general, it's much less painful than it sounds. If you use pointer variables (which is the case for most code most of the time) then you don't have a problem. There are plenty of cases where you can blow yourself up moving from 32-bit to 64-bit, but all of these cases are things that are Discouraged (with a capital D!) by the language.
In general, it's much less painful than it sounds. If you use pointer variables (which is the case for most code most of the time) then you don't have a problem. There are plenty of cases where you can blow yourself up moving from 32-bit to 64-bit, but all of these cases are things that are Discouraged (with a capital D!) by the language.
BMW and Price
BMWs would be cheaper in Germany, because you don't have to pay for frieght, and smogging it, (especially in California)
BMWs would be cheaper in Germany, because you don't have to pay for frieght, and smogging it, (especially in California)
With BMW you are correct. With Sony, my check was hindered by my illiteracy in Japanese. However, I couldn't help but notice that Europeans have a wider selection of German sports cars than we Americans. Stick that in your iTMS and smoke it.
To some extent, but they still have to pay corporate income tax in the EU for the business they do there.
Is Microsoft's music store even available in Europe yet, or just announced? I don't think it's open for business even in the US. If MS's music store isn't open for business in the EU, then they're at the same stage Apple is.
Either way, my point is, it will take Apple a longer time to reach an agreement in either place because of the DRM issue. The DRM issue is a constant in both the US and the EU, so the differences between US law and EU law are the main differentiating factor. The EU is taking longer, therefore, EU law is more difficult to negotiate through.
I am not going to go any further than this. We have more German sports cars available ie more choice on how to configure a BMW? Ok so what? I am not comparing what Europe has more of or US has more of. And who cares if we have more BMW if you have cheaper ones? But that is way beyond the point I wanted to make and I think I made it clear enough and this is my last post on that:
Apple's product's one way or the other are more expensive in Europe any measure or yardstick you want to use they come up by an extra 15% in the best case to a good 35% in US$ terms.(PPP not taken into the account of course cause then everything is more expensive in Europe). And where I was leading it is that there is not a good enough reason for that. Especially given the EU favourable exchange rate of the past 5 months...
And to bring your point in I wouldn't mind if I couldn't configure the 15" PB as long as I could buy it for the same price as the US does..... So one day after you have graduated and you would like that 5series or whatever you will be happy not to have all the options but have paid a month of your salary less for it....
ok, it's a little off topic, but macrumors hasn't updated in a while, and when we're getting this close to game time, it's unacceptable!