Nice package, Steve Jan 11 2006

In his keynote to kick off the Macworld conference in San Francisco yesterday, Steve Jobs announced a slew of cool Apple stuff. Standing out was ofcourse the brand new Intel-based Apple computers, with new iMac’s, and a new notebook, the MacBook Pro. The MacBook Pro certainly looks impressive, and the idea of being able to run Windows or OSX on the hardware is another key feature for me.

It’s excellent the way the Apple site updates as soon as the announcement is made, and it’s good that the UK gets these products at the same time as our US counterparts. But here’s what I don’t get - take a look at both sites, and check the prices. For the 1.67Ghz MacBook Pro, expect to pay $1999.00 Stateside, equivalent at today’s rates to around £1056. Looking at our own order site over here however, for the same notebook, I’m looking at paying £1429 ($2447)! What’s the deal here, Steve? Not content with making us Brits pay 79p ($1.35) for each song on iTunes, compared to $0.99 across the pond? And while I’ve nicely moved on to the topic of iTunes, why is it also assumed that no-one over here likes Saturday Night Live, or the NHL? Big distribution deals for video content over iTMS are signed, but all us UK users of the iTMS see are music videos. I understood there must be numerous legal and licensing issues, but there must be some decent content that Apple could secure worldwide!

Plain and simple, I *want* to buy Apple, but they are not making it very easy for me. I think I’ll wait til I’m next Stateside before looking at these new additions to the Apple computer family. And I’ll keep hoping that the UK iTMS is improved so it can stand shoulder to shoulder with its bigger American brother :-)