Apple makes PR stuff-up
THE GLORIOUS Apple Empire's ambitious plans to conquer Russia seem to have gone tits up because it expected the country to behave like every other nation.
In most Apple marketing scenarios, Jobs' Mob grants an audience to local media, which feels honoured by the attention, it then releases an overpriced gizmo which it convinces punters they should be pleased to buy.
Well, they tried that in a media launch in Russian and were surprised to discover that it went down like a pint of cold sick.
Writing in his bog, Alex Patsay, who is a hack and a Mac user said that Apple have shown a total lack of understanding about Russia.
He said Apple thought that because there was shedloads of oil money in the country, Russians must be rolling in dosh.
So in its usual customer friendly way it changed them 75 per cent more for its gadgets than it does in the US.
So the average Russian, who never sees any oil money and is on $300 a month is expected to pay over the odds for an iPod. The MacBook Air with SSD hard drive, that costs $3098 in the uS is being flogged for $5000 in Russia.
Jobs' Mob has continued its cavalier attitude to consumers by refusing to stick Cyrillic on the keyboard. Since most Russians do not use Latin letters Apple might as well be saying sod you write in American. It is actually illegal to do that in Russia, but so far no one has told Apple.
The other thing about the press conference was it assumed that Russian hacks were as stupid as their American counterparts. It banked on about movie rentals, Apple TV update, and the iPod touch update but forgot that iTunes Store doesn’t exist in Russia, and Apple doesn’t want to set one up.
As a Mac fan, Patsay was embarrassed when a fellow hack asked an Apple rep how he was supposed to upgrade his very expensive Ipod without Itunes. He was told if he bought a new one the upgrade would be included. So having spent two months salary on an Ipod, Apple expects them to spend another two months' worth on a firmware upgrade.
The phrases disconnected from reality along with the words arrogant and bastids seems to crop into mind.
More here. µ
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the obligatory joke: In Soviet Russia, iPod doesn't buy You.
Wow, it's barely past noon on Monday here on the good ole' East Coast of the USA, and Nick already has the first "Apple blows" article for the week up and posted! Awesome job! Of course he forgot the part where Jobso went into the Moscow ghetto and slept with a 16 year-old prostitute (he gave her a coupon for an iPod for 25% off); he then publically urinated in Kremlin Square after getting sauced on the best Russian Vodka, and then he and his employees goose-stepped through the streets shouting "Heil!" and throwing broken iPhones at small children, who then went running crying to their moms. So other than a few factual ommissions and not putting your negative bias on the story, nice article.
Apple does it in Asia, too, the arrogant b*stards. The difference is, the media here is as pliant as that in the West.
"Jobs' Mob"? Who writes this stuff? maybe underneath all the anti Apple bias there is a story here but I can't be arsed - life is too short
a more truthful statement hath never been stated...though i'm not laughing. oh the joys of spending obscene amounts of dosh on pseudo-proprietary digusess...
The bad price apple policy in Russia just makes me regularly enjoy the products made under IRIVER trade mark.
I know many russians — they good and rich mans, but not SO rich... wtf?
I see the price policy as a good thing, at least this way general Russian public will be relatively free of CrappleMacs, which are all just an overpriced, under functional, hyped up equivalents of the same mp3/4 player, Unix Desktop, MythTV box.
I'd like to move to Mac but now I will think it out once again. The Apple showed that it's nor interested in customers in Russia and I think this fact is unknown in Apple HQ.
As a person living in Russia I agree with most stuff in the article. I was thinking about purchasing Mac Pro, but when compared US price of about 2700$ against prices suggested by Moscow Apple dealers (over 4000$ for the same model) I refused the idea. It is just stupid to pay 50% over US price. As for Ipod touch, I don't understand what problems with firmware update are mentioned. I've recently updated the firmware using ITunes software without any problems.
I too was thinking about moving to Mac, although now my intention is staggered. What I see in my country is iPhone - $1000, MacBook - over $3000. And average salary here is twice less than that in Russia. The only thing I was up to is iPod Shuffle - $90. This little trickle is affordable. Go on, Steve :)