Apple said:" It is certaintly not and we take that allegation VERY seriously"

[mikeb]

So I succumbed to the inevitable, and replaced the broken 3GS with an IPHONE 4S, and whilst I was there updated to a new Macbook Pro.

I said ruefully to the apple store - half joking - half serious "it must be a price fixing cartel, or why does nobody do deals anywhere? - I have been waiting for the price to fall or someone to do a great deal...and they don't"

At which point the salesmen said "it is most certainl NOT a price fixing cartel - we take that allegation seriously"

So I said - then how can you explain to me, why nobody ever cuts prices for iDevices.

So are the margnis really paper thin on Apple Products? The most profitable phone and pad company in the world, charging the highest prices of any, or is there a control on what people sell for? Why are there no great deals anywhere? why do most follow apples pricing?

As an aside - I got into adiscussion with the PC world manager when i bought my IPAD the day it came out. I said "why you display the accessories in such a useless way?" they don't tell me anything about what they are for...why don't you put information boards round, and why such a monumental waste of store space?

He said..."because we have to stock what apple tell us to, display it how they tell us to, display it where they tell us to, decorate the way they tell us to, run the live video they tell us to, use only the approved point of sale information. (more or less none!) If we don't do it this way, they would stop us selling any of it.

So am I to believe this complete stranglehold does not extend to prices "advice" too - with an "offer they cannot refuse" - "do it this way or else.."

Why else is nobody offering "great deals" on apple? Or are margins only a tenner a time? Forcing the prices on them?
Is this the new equivalent of Barclays/ LIBOR rate scandal coming of 2015? I am a firm believer in the idea that if it "smells like it" "looks like it" "tastes like it" then it " probably is so don't put your foot in it"

***discuss***

[Nidec]

Of course its a 'cartel' even if that isn't the exact phrase to use. Apple will never say it but if they found anyone undercutting the market IMHO that retailer would find future stock orders 'delayed'. I don't think Apple would ever put anything in writing, they may not even tell the retailer that they are not happy, they would just make sure that retailer could no longer sell their products.
They wouldn't be the 1st nor the last to do this, but its a pig to prove

[JJMcClure]

this complete stranglehold *

Exactly why I don't buy apple products, I didn't want to put money in Steve Job's pocket because I didn't like the way he did business or the fact that their software is proprietary and they're trying to lock everything into a mutually dependent system of products and then charge you for using that too.

I've mentioned a ton of times in threads where Google are being attacked for allegedly trying to creating a monopoly that Apple are much worse and much more blatant about doing that too, no one seems to care. They even recommend using Bing, a product put out by a company that's actually been prosecuted for creating a monopoly and found guilty of unfair business practices.

No, you won't see many iRants on here.

[grynge]

I could be wrong but the last time I looked at dealing with apple, the way they structure the bonus pricing level basically means to get the best price you have to charge the RRP under cutting that price basically meant not only did your profit margin go down but your buy price went up as well, I know they had structured it so they weren't breaking any laws (here in australia)

The other company probably worse than apple is nintendo believe it or not, dealing with them was so bad in the end the store I had partnership in stopped selling their products. If you put any other competing product within such and such metres of their displays meant your price went up and blah blah blah. If you offered the same game from another system your price went up, well sorry your discount dissappeared basically the same as you price went up.

[DaveMurphy]

It comes down to supply and demand - currently there are more people who want the latest Apple product than there are available units. They might possibly be restricting production to make sure this state of affairs or it might just be that there aren't sufficient production facilities available to meet the level of demand. Part of it comes down to Apple being able to stifle competition using the patent system to prevent others from "stealing" their ideas and everybody involved in patent battles settling out of court with license fees and/or trading use of owned patents which makes sure that no binding legal decision is ever reached as to the validity of a given patent.

You say that you "succumbed to the inevitable" which basically means that your emotional desire for an Apple product finally overcame your price sensitivity and you just said "oh shut up and take my money". This happens to sufficiently large numbers of people that Apple really don't care about the people that still care more about the price than the desire to own an iThing so they can get away with charging whatever the heck they like regardless of margins.

I don't think you can really compare this with LIBOR, after all you weren't dragged kicking and screaming off the street and forced to give Apple your credit card details. You could have bought an android phone instead - I'm told the Samsung phones are good, assuming you can even buy one while Apple are beating them with the patent stick.

I own a macbook btw and it's the best computer I've ever owned, I use it more than the Windows and Linux machines I have available. Maybe there's a need for an Apple Customers Anonymous group.

Hi, my name is Dave and I love my macbook, I've been an Apple User for 5 years now ...

[mikeb]

Exactly why I don't buy apple products, I didn't want to put money in Steve Job's pocket because I didn't like the way he did business or the fact that their software is proprietary and they're trying to lock everything into a mutually dependent system of products and then charge you for using that too.

I agree with you - the lock in issues. All except "steve jobs pocket!!": not any more.

In their defence jobs was a true innovator.

But it could have been different - With the lead they had I cannot understand why blackberry did not take over these markets instead, indeed if you read alan sugars biography , he says he invested in a touch screen device long before which could have been the early generation of this new empire, but took his eye of the ball because of his involvement with tottenham. What might have been. The fact is jobs did it.
.
For reference I don't accuse google of trying to "create a monopoly" - my biggest concern is the speed with which they make changes which can have disastrous effects on small business, not least because the changes are relatively arbitrary , ie the "new order" is "different" rather than "Objectively better"


Thanks Grynge and Nidec - real eye opening stuff - I had no idea such things were legal.. And disgraceful!

[mikeb]

.

You say that you "succumbed to the inevitable" which basically means that your emotional desire for an Apple product finally overcame your price sensitivity and you just said "oh shut up and take my money". This happens to sufficiently large numbers of people that Apple really don't care about the people that still care more about the price than the desire to own an iThing so they can get away with charging whatever the heck they like regardless of margins.

I don't think you can really compare this with LIBOR, after all you weren't dragged kicking and screaming off the street and forced to give Apple your credit card details. You could have bought an android phone instead - I'm told the Samsung phones are good, assuming you can even buy one while Apple are beating them with the patent stick.

I own a macbook btw and it's the best computer I've ever owned, I use it more than the Windows and Linux machines I have available. Maybe there's a need for an Apple Customers Anonymous group.

Hi, my name is Dave and I love my macbook, I've been an Apple User for 5 years now ...

For me at least it is no longer a "desire" thing.
The tail is now wagging the dog.

My workflow is based around i Devices eg the chaining of apps such as "reeder" to "instapaper" through "posterous" to facebook twitter and the rest. It would be a lot slower without those apps.

Plus the media programmes such as screenflow and keynote (my view) kick ass with powerpoint and camtasia, and if nothing else are cheaper than office. So you kind of lock yourself in, and throw away the key.

This time the iphone4S was free, so it wasnt a "money" decision, and moving away from O2 is such a horrendous undertaking , that staying same old , same old is just easier.

My name is Mike and I am an applehollic.

Not quite......my home network has five machines on it and is XP. but i also have +ipad+macbook+iphone. - So does that make me a schizoprenic?

Dave - have you used the dual boot into windows? or have you used parallels? what were expereinces?

[DaveMurphy]

Screenflow and Keynote are absolutely brilliant I use those quite extensively in preference to PowerPoint and CamTasia - the latter two have barely seen any use at all since I moved a lot of my workflow to the macbook.

I haven't dual booted OSX with windows or made use of Parallels or VMWare Fusion although I do dual boot linux with windows - OSX has a much more intuitive trackpad and I find it really hard to use the Windows/Linux method on laptops. Sometimes I'd kill for easier right click access but the gesture support tends to make up for that lack.

Mostly I run Linux and Windows on desktop machines and quite often use TightVNC to access those from the macbook or work from a command line using the OSX terminal connected to Linux machines over ssh. I use open source software quite extensively and I find that it's generally much easier to get that up and running on OSX than it is on Windows although I do port software to Windows as well - these days I mostly cross compile from Linux and do little actual programming work directly on Windows but I keep dedicated Windows installs for testing.

Funnily enough I'm a big Nintendo fan as well although I do disagree with quite a lot of their business practices - I've done some commercial work on their consoles and the hoops developers have to jump through to get games published are rather annoying. Nintendo aren't my biggest fan these days due to the work I do making it easier for amateurs to build their own games and applications and run them directly on Nintendo consoles without authorisation. So far I've escaped legal issues personally but Nintendo have brought lawsuits that have impacted indirectly on my work.

[crabfoot]

With the lead they had I cannot understand why blackberry did not take over these markets instead,

My memory says that had something to do with a US government department issuing an edict about not using the things because off-device data was not being held in a "secure" location (ie it was not in the US, it was in Belgium or Portugal or somewhere insecure like that).