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Steve Jobs Weighs in on iPad International Pricing and Taxes

min_t said:
what's really surprising about this article is the fact that Germans allowed the RIAA of their country to pass a law that uses a public entity like their government to collect extortion taxes for a private organization. So if these copyright holders never produced another product, they would still be paid for sitting on their lazy ass. Mandatory welfare at its best.:mad:
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This. IP law is out of control and it's a worldwide issue.
 
Oh my goodness. Why are people e-mailing steve over the value added tax. Are people really stupid enough not to understand how the EU Taxes work?

If i was steve i would have used a couple of expletives. I guess for some people ignorance and bliss walk hand in hand. :rolleyes:
 
TranceNW said:
"Please educate yourself"...
Please explain how that is not rude.
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It suggests that the person being spoken to is perfectly capable of looking up and comprehending the information themselves. In what sense is that rude or insulting?
 
Darkroom said:
news flash! this just in: apple products are expensive.
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haha, totally, now where is my cheap plastic ipad.

Oh wait that why it cost so much?

You know I try to say Apple products are expensive but I know better, knowing what it cost to build a good gaming rig I can say its in par with considering the major difference of material between say an Imac and a Dell computer.

Memory is a whole different animal. :eek:

About the only thing PC have over Apple is the video processor but only a little behind if you want to game but if not the difference between the 4850 and the 5750 is so little.

I for one just don't see apple products more expensive, considering how well designed and the material they put into it.

I don't see Dell with a nice aluminum unibody. What would that Dell Laptop cost, not as cheap as their plastic stuff.
 
TennisandMusic said:
I do get a kick out of people defending sheer rudeness. I don't care if Steve has a trillion dollars and ruled the Earth. You don't talk to people like that. He's pretty much a giant (fill in the blank with your favorite pejorative).

What's funny is that without Woz, he's a complete nobody. The guy is not an engineer. He's never made a friggin' product in his entire life. He just gets to boss people around because he was in the right place at the right time. Heck, he even screwed over his original partner back in the day.
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Steve Jobs is a nobody, what world do you live, the man know how to run and make a business work. Woz is a great guy but he is in his little bubble world of engineering but who cares, when was the last time he made anything. I think you better learn who runs companies and its not an engineer for most companies. That not to day Jobs is perfect, but lets face it, if someone in Germany thinks the Ipad is expensive, don't buy it. Or better vote out their leader and put someone that will get their tax system fixed, or at least fix that joke of a tax the Copyright tax WTF that makes no sense at all. But I guess they don't get it, or they don't want to.
 
JediZenMaster said:
Oh my goodness. Why are people e-mailing steve over the value added tax. Are people really stupid enough not to understand how the EU Taxes work?
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Maybe he was surprised that Apple users really are lazy and stupid enough to actually take the time to email the CEO of a major corporation complaining about the pricing of a product, instead of bothering to check out how much the relative price actually is elsewhere first. Using that big collection of wires and servers. I think it's called "the internet."

If it was me replying I would have told the dumb f**ks to stop wasting my time or just weep in a corner about how moronic the user base is.

Next time a light bulb goes out I'm going to email the CEO of GE and ask him what's wrong with it. That would seem to be the sensible option.
 
TennisandMusic said:
I do get a kick out of people defending sheer rudeness. I don't care if Steve has a trillion dollars and ruled the Earth. You don't talk to people like that. He's pretty much a giant (fill in the blank with your favorite pejorative).
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He also didn't have to respond at all. :p
 
mtzalex said:
is it me, or is Steve just getting more rude every time??

he doesn't have to attack!! people are just asking questions...

his PR team should talk to him... or spank him hahaha
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There was nothing rude about his response. Here he has people who refuse to do two seconds of research e-mailing a CEO of a company and you expect him to send flowers and puppies?? Really???
 
Millah said:
Wow, all you who are saying that Steve is rude must not have been following him for very long. He's known for being upfront and short tempered.

But give me a break. I'd like to see how some of you all would respond being in his exact same position, having thousands and thousands of stupid people constantly sending you complaints and stupid questions. The fact that the CEO of Jobs' status actually has his address public and even RESPONDS to people is pretty amazing, especially at the rate he's been recently.

Work in customer service for a few years and you'll understand how whiney and stupid most people are.
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+1

Though I doubt Steve is personally making (many? some?) of these responses :)

Steve is well known for being short, brutal, and to the point. It's been incredibly successful for him for the past 30-odd years, so why not?
 
I guess I shouldn't be surprised at the responses here, but it's amazing how people will rationalize or defend anything and everything Jobs does or says. If Bill Gates sent out a reply like that, just about every single person defending him here would be frothing at the mouth and attacking him. Instead, people rationalize and attack the sender of the email. It's really hard to argue about the success of Jobs and how important he is to Apple, but when I read that reply, the first thing that crossed my mind was - man, what an a$$hole.
 
TranceNW said:
Whilst I like how direct Jobs is, replying with the words "Please educate yourself" is just rude and offensive to a potential customer.
:
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Pleqse educate yourself, the world's far too full of stupid people.


Note that..this exposes that people have -no- clue how their own taxation systems work as it applies to products made elsewhere, etc.

Thats just pretty f**king sad..but in the world of the internet, strangely more and more true every day.

Wont even get into the concept of if someone cant explain what they think the background behind the hammered-every-10-minutes news cycle, they shouldnt be allowed to vote for anything higher than mayor.
 
mtzalex said:
is it me, or is Steve just getting more rude every time??

he doesn't have to attack!! people are just asking questions...

his PR team should talk to him... or spank him hahaha
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maybe he is just pissed off because people start crying without informing themselves? uninformed people make ma wanna rage too.

the most people here in germany don't get that the prices in the US apple store are without sales taxes. whereas in europe you must state prices including VAT. making it look like the apple premium is somewhere around 25% where in reality it's ~5%.
 
btrav13 said:
I'm going to go with the flow here and say Jobs was completely IN line. I mean be realistic, how many CEO's of companies this size actually answer customer emails?!?
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More should!!!

Do you own stock in a company where the CEO has no personal perspective on how their products affect people?

That used to be a good trait to have..kinda depressing to think that CEO's should be sheltered from reality.
 
TranceNW said:
"Please educate yourself"...
Please explain how that is not rude.
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Its to the point, no more, no less.

You dont Email the CEO of a company without attempting to understand the problem on your own for a few minutes first.

"If I'm curt with you, it's because time is a factor. I think fast, I talk fast.."


He doesnt have to take time to help or educate anybody ya know, he can be just as unreachable as any other CEO, of which most will never be as successful as he's been, combined. And thats not being a SJ fan, thats just the facts.
 
His lucky to be in the situation his in and Apple being successful, quite frankly your a rude ****!

Why didn't you set the price so that with the tax it matched Americas?
 
I don't understand

So why is the Time Capsule 2TB $499 in the states and £388 in the UK, when the iPad 16GB wifi is $499 in the states and £429 in the UK?

Time Capsule 2TB - $499 = £388

iPad 16GB wifi - $499 = £429
 
As much as I thought, "Please educate yourself" was somewhat blunt on Jobs behalf (if it was indeed him replying), why people would want to bitch to the CEO of Apple over the iPad price is beyond me. It's not going to make him think, "Hold on, I think I'll drop £100 off the price, these people are correct".

You know what the iPad costs, and being fair I was only £30 out on every model when I guessed my own UK prices last month, so if you want one then pay for it. If not, there's plenty of people who will happily snap up the stock for you.
 
canadianmacguy said:
Sigh.. I miss the good old days when stupid people didn't buy Apple products.. :mad:
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The Mac was explicitly sold as "the computer for the rest of us", i.e. for those without the technical ability to handle other machines.

It just so happens that a computer designed for "the stupid" (and I mean that as un-rudely as pseudo-Steve meant in his mail) is sufficiently intuitive that perhaps not only "the stupid" can benefit from it.

ggt said:
So why is the Time Capsule 2TB $499 in the states and £388 in the UK, when the iPad 16GB wifi is $499 in the states and £429 in the UK?
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Jobs is not telling the full truth, and like all good marketers he does it with as much blunt arrogance as when he's being honest. His price for computers outside the US tend to be dollar price + VAT + surcharge, where surcharge in the UK usually starts around £30 for computers but increases as exchange rate changes (prices are never adjusted downwards as the foreign currency increases in value). When £1 was approaching $2, I'll leave you to guess what Apple's prices were not.

And the surcharge is usually fairly low in the UK. I'm sure that long journey from South-East Asia to Australia makes for greater profits/losses (delete as appropriate) down under.
 
TranceNW said:
"Please educate yourself"...
Please explain how that is not rude.
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Since when did we all get so sensitive about words?

It could arguably be interpreted as "(before asking me this ridiculous question,) please educate yourself". Steve was kind enough not to include the first part.

What sort of disrespectful person e-mails the CEO of a company to get this sort of information? Does the same guy ask Jim Skinner why a McDonalds cheeseburger cost more in Hawaii than it does in Illinois? It seems the person questioning needs to do more than educate himself.
 
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