Apple stores are coming to Germany

So Apple is apparently coming to town.

Apple Insider reports:

As the Nano I just bought 14 months ago has quit working and the cost for repairing is about the same as a new one (so the store told me) and the Apple 1 year warrenty is over I will not buy another one I think.

Anyone else had problems with Apple Ipod's? And why do they haev a one year warrenty and not the standard two year warranty like other electronics sold in Germany?

I thought the 2 year waranty was law now. I'm sure it came in 2002. Did you actually buy it in Germany?

Yep. If bought here there is a 2 year warranty. Despite anything a salesman may say.

While on this topic, i just ran into the following motto on Apple website:

Go beyond Vista. It's time to get a Mac

I would have never thought of such a direct criticism of Microsoft by Apple.

I have an early iPod mini that's never had problems, but it gets very little use.

Here's a website for fixing your iPod yourself, if it truly is out of warranty.

in spite of the fact that my last ipod died at around 2 years...i decided I really couldn't live without one... I just got a new nano...
I decided that I could do every 2 years if i use the approach that it's not going to last very long and just get the least expensive one...(i typically buy for the long haul)...

most of my friends who have them, though, told me that theirs all made it to about 2 years too!

Actually the accepted life of electronics goods is 5 years, at least in the UK, and probably the whole of the EU. You can insist on repairs for a reduced fee until that time is up, although it could be an exercise in persistence.

I have an original iPod from 2002 (before the dock was invented) which is still working fine, though it loses its charge after about 4 days. It did stop working one time when I was in the U.K., but by the time I got back to Germany it was OK again - don't know why.

Got mine in 2003, within 6 months the battery was acting up, I'd charge it and get 20 mins playtime off it. Hallowe'en 2005 it just died, the display has the file with exclamation mark and nowt else. For something that looks that good and costs that much, it's not been very reliable. I did install Linux on it to play Doom but surely that, no, darn, nothing to do with its demise whatsoever. Probably just needs a new harddisk. I'll try that fix-it-yourself site then Freiheit, thanks for the link, it looks good.

There is already an Apple store on Barerstrasse, just above Schellingstrasse and close to where the Arc is. Sure it is just a tiny one but you can buy lots of Apple acoutrements. If they don't have it they can order it. (like the arm band for the 30 gig- they only had them for the small ones)

I was just in the Apple superstores in Los Angeles and they had everthing on the shelves as well as several helpful employees ready to talk you through the workings of the Mac if you like or the choices of extras you could add on to your sale. The little store on Barerstrasse had only one guy behind the counter and he seemed more interested in telling me what he didn't have in the store than what he did have.

I'm sure the big Apple stores will have many helpful employees to walk us through any questions. And I would hope that they would sell computers with English operating systems as well as German but that seems like a pipe dream.

There are a number of stores in Munich that carry Apple stuff or even carry only Apple products, but none are Apple-owned stores. The best one to my knowledge is Gravis on Sendlingerstr. They have the full line of laptops and desktops on display along with a good selection of Apple and 3rd-party accessories.

The only good thing about Apple itself opening a store will be for warranty service, because you know the prices will not be any lower there.

Ipods have always been expensive crap. You can get MP3 players from other makers with greater storage space cheaper.
You also don't get locked into iTunes. Some of these players even look and act like an iPod..

I don't see why it should be, you can order them with English operating sytems through their online shop, so it shouldn't be too much of a problem for them to do it from a real shop.

OS X, whether preinstalled or in a retail box, will ask you what langauge you want on your machine. I bought an iMac from Gravis and just picked English on the 1st boot.