Every time I visit the holy land I am surprised by the fewness of mac users. I suppose one explanation is that, as much as it pains me to admit it, Microsoft does better job with Hebrew than Mac OS. Another explanation is that there is only one seller of apple products and prices are the same in all stores. Israelis are not necessarily reluctant to spend money, but they like to compare prices and to bargain. In the pc market there are sufficiently many manufacturers, stores and “special offers”’ to give all the buyers the utility from believing they got a better deal than their brothers. (I am an exception — I don’t care how much I pay, and I hate bargaining. I only need to know that everybody pays the same price. But I am a mac user)
These explanations notwithstanding, I still think the weak presence of macbooks in Israel is an anomaly. There are simply too many tech-savvies who do their aimless surfing and write their first novels on a pc. In fact, I am sometimes the only person sitting around in Arcaffe with macbook !
So suppose you are Apple and you want to claim ownership of these customers, who by right and tradition belong to you. There is an easy and cheap way to get the attention of this lot, which brings me to the decision of the Israeli Ministry of Communications (Yea, there is such a thing. We have ministers for everything and also ministers for nothing) to confiscate iPads from travelers entering Israel. I have already read several commenters in Israeli websites suggesting the most obvious theory about this decision: It’s a marketing trick. Somebody in Apple has `accidentally’ forgotten to provide the necessary documents, or found some other way to convince the government that iPad does not comply with some standards, so that in a couple of weeks, when the ban is lifted just in time for iPad’s official release in Israel, it will be labeled as the cool gadget that frightens the dumb bureaucrats from the ministry of communication. Already in my next trip to the homeland in June everybody in Tel Aviv will be using iPad.
The Leisure of the Theory Class 
5 comments
April 17, 2010 at 8:42 pm
Israel Bans Apple’s IPad | iPads, iPods, iPhones
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April 18, 2010 at 1:26 am
Israel’s Ipad Ban the Leisure of the Theory Class
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April 18, 2010 at 8:24 am
Eilon
Well, an interesting perspective. One of the Israeli parliament members just said that the ban originates from fear that the frequencies used by iPad will clash with those used by the army. As usual in the holy land, the army takes over everything, also over Apple.
April 18, 2010 at 10:34 am
arie
It’s clear that it is not a issue of standards or wifi regulation. If it was so in 24h MoC would test the device and prove it….
Why do they insist with nonsence…let’s see.
5000 units from direct import means 1.5 Mil $ less revenue for government and importers (1/3, 2/3).
Furthermore, as the European lunch is one month from now, they hope to educate people to buy it locally (means ±300 US $ on top of the US price)….
Does it worth the bad PR for Israel and violation human rights for Israeli..? Not sure.
April 18, 2010 at 11:06 am
Eran
but they can already tax direct import now, no ? And from what i understand, they confiscate ipads from travelers who wouldn’t have left it in the country (in fact, i read somewhere they even have the chutzpah to charge storage fee)