Or maybe just one comment: Apple makes a margin 25% higher in Europe than in the US provided that 1 Euro is roughly 1.25 USD. So if you purchase for more than 2000 euros on AppleStore, which – I acknowledge, doesn’t happen every day, you’d better go to New York (fare: 500 euros max. for a return trip from Paris or London; it takes no more than 6 hours) for a week-end, bump at Soho or 57th/5th Avenue’s Apple Store for a while, and enjoy Greenwich’s bakeries, Harlem’s Jazz music and Lower East’s restaurants, than wait 3 weeks for your laptop to be shipped.

Consumers don’t usually enjoy being taken for fools. Right now, Apple is surfing on the iPod wave and its brand is in the middle of a momentum (like its stock price). But one day or another, Apple will have to deal with the disruptivity of the Internet, which allows for better price transparency.

PS: by the way, how do you do the Euro symbol on a Mac keyboard?

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Steve Ballmer will be giving a lecture on Wednesday night at Ecole Polytechnique, 10 minutes from where I live on the Ecole Centrale Paris campus, and I’m not sure I’ll be able to make it because it’s exam time over here. Too bad.

So, if any of my beloved readers plan to go there, I’d be glad to publish right here on “Tech IT Easy” the minutes of the event you would write. Please, do it for me, I’d be really grateful if I could just hear (podcast or video podcast) or read what Microsoft’s new captain has to say.

Thank you in advance. I repeat: if you plan to go and listen to Steve Ballmer, let me know!

Addendum 19th October 2006: Benjamin Gauthey, a blogger and Microsoftee I met recently, just published a video podcast of Ballmer’s speech at Ecole Polytechnique. Everything’s here, I especially recommend..no, just to listen to everything.

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