renaissance: meet clue
[Warning: dull posting ahoy!]
Like many of the faithful Mac lemmings, I rushed out and picked up a copy of the new OS upgrade. After a bit of hand-holding courtesy of a very useful eBook I’ve got it all happily installed. And it’s very nice. There’s just enough cool things in it to keep me going. And it’s marginally faster than 10.2 on my iBook (800Mhz; 640Mb; 32Mb VRAM).
What’s not so good is Apple’s insistence that yet another license for Quicktime Pro needs to be purchased if I want to view movies full screen (among other advantages… although the full screen thing is the most pressing if I want to continue watching all those, ah, downloaded TV programs).
OK, if you insist, Mr Jobs. Here, have some more money.
So off I went to the Apple NZ web store, thinking it’d be a simple matter to buy the little string of letters that enables the extra features to be unlocked. But no.
That’s right. You can’t actually buy it from them!
So I fired off a quick email and got this curious reply, the pertinent bit of which was as follows:
While it is not possible to order Quicktime products through the NZ online store, it is possible to purchase Quicktime Pro online through Apple Australia: http://www.apple.com.au/quicktime/
Please note that New Zealand customers must: Enter in your addressing details as normal but put NSW in the STATE field and 2000 in the POSTCODE field. This will signify that it is a New Zealand order.
After purchasing the product, you should be emailed an activation key.
Huh? Renaissance, the official NZ distributor for Apple, can’t get it together enough to offer something as simple as a license code on their site? This, the same company that’s making truckloads of cash off the aforementioned Apple lemmings?
Duh.
Well, since it’s obviously OK by Apple NZ / Renaissance to falsify one’s address details with Apple then I might as well purchase it at the US Apple Store, pretend to be from a state with no sales tax (like Oregon, for example), and save some handy wedge.
And maybe Renaissance can get their shit together for next time.
Heck
4 May 2005, 00:30 #
Oh, no, no. Not dull at all.
Apple does not make things easy, that much is true as well.
I don’t know how things are exactly now, and I surely hope I’m not in a position where I have to find out, but in Europe, just up until two years ago, if you wanted to make use of Apple’s warranty to fix, say, for instance, a Powerbook’s damaged hard drive who had just imploded on you because it was defective, you’d have to send your computer to the Netherlands, if I’m not mistaken (if it was the Netherlands or not is not the point, the point is it could be done only in one effin country in the whole continent) and wait up until it came back. It could be months. It was, in fact, in most cases.
The company wouldn’t allow anyone (not even one of the authorized retailers in your own country) to mess with the machine, or the warranty would be void.
One to six months (heard of a case from someone I know) without a computer? What do you know, I bought a new hard drive online and installed it myself. Bye bye warranty. What else could I do?
I also know from retailers that Apple does not allow for much of a profit either, or let them have much stock of their products. It’s quite some time that it’s easier and faster to order online from Apple, which may be good. Or not. I’m not sure as yet. Sometimes I would have liked to step into a store and get what I needed in ten minutes, instead of waiting for two days or longer for the mail to come.
And the Quicktime licensing is simply one of those things one doesn’t get, but you’ve covered that.
Hi, Steve, keep the iPods coming, we love you.
nycgirl
4 May 2005, 10:23 #
that’s really amazing, you would think that in becoming an apple distributer you would need to have it together enough to even be able to sell apple stuff. Says the pink ipod mini lemming.
Alan
4 May 2005, 11:18 #
I’ve just had another email from Apple NZ (having sent them the URL of this page). It seems they’ve tried to enable sales of QTPro via their Apple NZ store before.
Apparently the problem is that Apple NZ / Renaissance is dependent on Apple Australia to enable or allow this to happen, and that’s where the blockage lies. In fact, it was Apple Australia who suggested the faking of customer details in order to allow sales of Quicktime Pro to NZ.
Well, either way it’s not a good look.
And it turns out that it is quite possible to use an NZ credit card at the US Apple store, so long as you enter a US address. Just don’t forget to nominate a state with zero sales tax…
Heck
4 May 2005, 12:13 #
But they won’t ship overseas. Or will they? Euros and Dollars are not quite the same, and I’m foreseeing endless joy here if can transmogrify currency…
Dave5
4 May 2005, 13:34 #
I am suprised you were able to purchase from the US site. I tried it and it bleated about my credit card not being issued from a US bank (even thou I had a US shipping address). That was a few years ago though.
Alan
4 May 2005, 13:44 #
I’m guessing that purchasing in the US only works for things like the QTPro rego code. Anything physical, then I think they’ll start having issues.
At least that’s my theory.
MiramarMike
5 May 2005, 16:51 #
Mr S Jobs doesn’t get much from Apple does he – thought he’d saidf no to the saltary and shares. He’s rolling in the Pixar fun.
AND, maybe Apple.au know more about the polictical shenanigans than we … have we been taken over and incorporated and it’s just a red-tape problem that no-ones been told yet?