http://www.techradar.com/news/computing ... ce--675490

Hmm, you wouldn't really be surprised if that was the price, would you?

I also wouldn't be surprised at the lifestyle sheep buying it in droves.

Ridiculously overpriced. But that's Apple for you. If they halved the prices, more people might buy.

If they halved the price and sold twice as many, they'd have to work twice as hard and would make far less profit.

I imagine development costs were reasonably high, so pricing on day one is always a tricky compromise. They'll keep the price as high as they can but still shift enough units to make it an achievable but slightly exclusive "must have" item for some people.

I'd definitely buy one for £150, but I expect they'd still sell many thousands if it was £600.

+1 though I expect some will still buy even if it were £1000.

$1 = £1 has been the norm in terms of software for years what's the issue ?

That's simply not true and hasn't been for ages. Nothing Apple make is sold on a $1=£1 price basis, nor are things from a lot of other people. You pay $60+tax for an xbox/ps3 game in the US (for example) whereas here they are 40 quid inc tax. Windows 7 home premium on Amazon US is $110 before tax, on the UK site it's £88 after tax. The only people who do $1=£1 any more are Adobe and they are bastards. Also, claiming something is 'overpriced' based purely on a news article that is filled with complete speculation is bordering on stupidity. Find out how much the thing actually costs, how much the competition are going to be charging for their equivalent devices (the HP slate for example) and then you can make a judgement about whether something is overpriced. Up to that point you're spitting in the wind.

Talking of which, generally speaking, there are two methods for making decent estimates of what the UK price of an Apple item already available in the US will be. They are

1) Find an item on the US applestore that is already on the UK applestore and use that price as a guide.
2) Take the US before tax price, convert to £, add 17.5% for VAT and then add 7% (Apple claim it costs them more to do business in the EU. I have no idea if that's true, but the extra price margin seems consistent) which makes for roughly 1.25 times the US price converted to £.

Method 1 Is actually quite tricky at the mo as there isn't anything that costs the same as an iPad on the store that I could find. Method 2 comes out at the following (assuming currency rate of £1 = $1.5)...

16GB wifi - $499 makes for £417 so call it £420
32GB wifi - $599 makes for £501 so call it £499 probably
64GB wifi - $699 makes for £584 - probably £579 maybe or, since it's a premium product, go for £599.

All bets are off on the 3G models since we don't know if the carriers are going to subsidise them with 18 month/2 year mobile data contracts.

Also, Play.com put speculative catalogue entries up for things all the time. They're about as reliable as tea leaves at predicting the future.

It is a step forward for Apple, the original Macs were priced at $1 = £4! After the market started to switch to grey imports, they dropped it to $1 = £2

The issue is that the current exchange rate is $1.50 to £1.

What Apple used to charge back in the day is completely irrelevant, especially when we're talking 20 years ago. The sane thing to do seems to be go look at current price differences, rather than making wild stabs in the dark based on assumptions that have been wrong for about the last 5 years.

32GB iPod Touch - US Applestore price $299 before tax. That translates at current exchange rates to near as damnit £200. Estimated price inc VAT = £234. Price of a 32GB iPod Touch on the UK Applestore? £234.
Base macbook air - US Applestore price $1449 pretax. Current exchange rate that's £999. Add vat - Estimated price =£1175. UK Applestore price? £1174. No markup.
Mac Mini 2.53GHz - US Applestore price $700. Current exchange makes that £532.66. Add VAT - £625.87 UK Applestore price? £663. Extra markup - 6%.

Just three examples picked at random. Strikes me the iPods might be a good guide to what Apple are going to do with the iPad but I wouldn't state my life on it.

However, the obvious point - Apple do not automatically charge vastly more for their products in the EU. Do I have to start wandering round with the cluehammer?

Jon

Am I missing something here:

What is its purpose?

Back then, the exchange rate was over $1.80 to the pound, your point?

It's less than $1.50 = £1, it's still dropping too

It was $1.5004 when I checked online when I wrote that.

I meant to say its dropping quickly it won't like that for long, it's rumoured to drop to around $1.15 = £1 by summer time