Somez

goofy1958 said:

Somez said:

Guys!

I’ve been a longtime reader of AI and reading the comments hete made me to signup and make my first comment.

I guess most of you are from the US. I’m from Europe (eastern part, still an EU member). I’ve been using Macs since 2004 (Mini G4, white iMac core2duo, first auminium unibody MacBook) and iPhones (3G, 3GS, 4S, 6), iPad mini.

I love these products because the UI is great, I get stability, good hardware, etc. I admit there are exceptions like the cracking polycarbonate Macs or the recent MacBook keyboard problems, etc. But overal I trust Apple’s products and I agree with the philosophy behind.

However I’m getting more and more fed up with Apple due to the pricing and restrictions around upgradebility. With latest iPhone X they went crazy. I cannot buy any of the Macs because they become insanely expensive as well. Still, you cannot upgrade the hard drive or the memory. And these restrictions are clearly not because of somekind of technical limitation. I believe Apple has started increasing prices since they cannot increase the volume sold. So the only way to make more revenue is by increasing prices.

I want to replace my old iPhone 6 this year, but I’m afraid prices will again be so high that I might just buy a Xiaomi phone. I know it’s Android, but one should not spend a whole month of salary in an iPhone.

Apple Watch? Same thing. I really want one but it’s so expensive compared to the wages here that I will probably skip it this year again. I have a Xiaomi Amazfit Bip for now and I don’t even want to tell how cheap it is. Of course it’s dumb compred to an Apple Watch.

Prices (apple.com vs my country’s Apple website)

iPhone X 256 GB, SIM-free: $1149 vs $1570 (36%)
Apple Watch S3 42mm, GPS-only: $359 vs $467 (23%)
iMac cheapest option: $1099 vs $1509 (37%)

Do you now understand why more and more people buy cheaper Android alternatives outside the US?

Not to mention that these prices only include 1 freaking year of warranty. 

Maybe you should petition your government to stop the ridiculous practice of adding VAT to everything that comes into the country.  It's not Apple's fault that your country is costing you more to buy an Apple product.  It's your government.