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The USD$ went from 9.50 to 12.50 in a month and I believe the last adjustment they did was at 8.5. Apple had 2 days of no online sales but the sales in the shop
by mrtksn 5y ago
The USD$ went from 9.50 to 12.50 in a month and I believe the last adjustment they did was at 8.5. Apple had 2 days of no online sales but the sales in the shops continued until the inventory depleted.
I was also going to grab a Macbook Pro when the price dropped below the US price but I wasn't decisive enough and missed the opportunity. I bet a lot of people bought MacBooks just to re-sell.
An interesting detail, in Turkey they are allowed to sell laptops with only Turkish keyboard layouts due to some law on protecting the language. Only German and Arabic layouts are excepted due to some trade agreements.
On the iPhones, the Turkish prices are never good due to very high taxation(about half of the price is tax). Turkey even pioneered the IMEI registration process where you can't use foreign device for longer than a few month in Turkey. If you like to bring a device from abroad, you need to register the device and pay a hefty registration fee and you can do it only once in two years. Officially, the registration is to prevent terrorist from using the devices as burners. The fee was 10 liras at the beginning but now it's over 2000.
- geoduck14 5y ago>Turkey even pioneered the IMEI registration process where you can't use foreign device for longer than a few month in Turkey. This is a cool fact!
- AdamJacobMuller 5y agoI remember the process of getting a SIM in turkey was super annoying. I had to physically go to a store where they needed BOTH of our passports and a second form of ID (so had to go back to the hotel and return with my traveling companion) and a decent 30 minute process of entering our information into databases and making copies of IDs. Compare that to most countries where I can either trivially pop into a local store and pick up a prepaid sim in a few minutes, or, for most of my travel I can have them shipped to me at home in advance so I can land in country with a local sim. Istanbul was worth it though.
- mrtksn 5y agoDevices, SIM cards and identities must be matched in Turkey, so that nobody does anything naughty. They also make the service providers keep tower signal logs worth of many years, so it's common to prove your whereabouts in courts by requesting these logs. On the plus side, you can see and manage all your data from the government portal. It's rather convenient to be able to see all the subscriptions(GSM, TV and so on) on your name and cancel them from there if you wish. Totalitarian control has its perks.
- sushsjsuauahab 5y ago>So that nobody does anything naughty Ah yes, now I know why all of those shootings and mass murders happened in the Turkish airport-- there was no system for mapping identities to SIM cards!! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Atatürk_Airport_attack https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Atatürk_Airport_attack
- mrtksn 5y agoThe security aspect was more of a pretext to force people purchase the heavily taxed officially imported mobile phones. Obviously, the usefulness for prevention of such attacks would be limited, it's more about identifying the offenders. It's also useful for surveillance, as you would expect a totalitarian state would like.
- AdamJacobMuller 5y ago> cancel them from there if you wish You can cancel such services from a government portal? That's nearly worth living under an authoritarian regime.
- throw3849 5y agoYou have to buy sim at airport, there is an exception from this registration, it is easy.
- mrtksn 5y ago
- tradertef 5y agoThis worked well for me. Relatives are not asking me anymore to buy a phone for them and send it to them via visiting relatives.