<p>Why shouldn’t Apple participate in illegal price fixing? Because it is illegal…</p>
<p>^newccuser</p>
<p>If Apple is ILLEGALLY fixing prices I am sure someone (e.g., the government, competitors, artists, maybe even you) would pursue it. Personally, I would love to have the strangehold broken. If there is no action, where is your evidence of “illegal price fixing?”</p>
<p>lol, among the four members of our family we own six Apple computers, four ipods and an ipad. DH mentioned this in his letter and received a reply that appears to be from Jobs. It says they value his feedback and will consider it.</p>
<p>It IS being pursued:</p>
<p>[The</a> Lawsuit Against Apple And Big Publishers: What’s In It | paidContent](<a href=“http://paidcontent.org/article/419-class-action-suit-against-apple-and-big-publishers-whats-in-it/]The”>http://paidcontent.org/article/419-class-action-suit-against-apple-and-big-publishers-whats-in-it/)</p>
<p>And commentary:</p>
<p>[A</a> Kindle World blog: Class action lawsuit against Apple and Big5 publishers re price fixing of ebooks. History and sourcing provided.](<a href=“A Kindle World blog: Class action lawsuit against Apple and Big5 publishers re price fixing of ebooks. History and sourcing provided.”>A Kindle World blog: Class action lawsuit against Apple and Big5 publishers re price fixing of ebooks. History and sourcing provided.)</p>
<p>sewhappy - that sounds promising, but I’m pretty sure it is canned response, maybe a generic one “signed off on” by Jobs. They probably get thousands of those letters per day. I doubt Stevie himself read it, but then again, hopefully I am wrong.</p>
<p>Oh come ON now, sewhappy, you don’t think “I value your feedback and will consider it” is part of a canned response? You cannot seriously think that Steve Jobs took time out of his day (and medical schedule) to personally answer your letter? Your 6 computers and 4 iPods are nothing to him.</p>
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<p>Many BN staff have LA undergrad degrees. You should not look down upon them.</p>
<p>I wasn’t looking down on them at all, IP. I was just saying that I don’t need anything out of them other than the ability to point me in the right direction for a book I’m looking for. I don’t use them as “consultants” as to what I’m going to read.</p>
<p>really- if he actually was going to reply to customers, I could tell him that my neighbor was in his class @ Reed, that our family has had Macs exclusively since 1995 & that my daughter co-wrote a LaTex manual while she was at Reed. ( which has many macs for student use).</p>
<p>But that letter probably came from the same place as those letters which make students think they are going to be admitted to ivy league schools.</p>
<p>But getting back to the bookstore topic, I do like clerks to be knowledgeable & I would hope that someone assigned to a certain area, would be familiar with authors/subjects in that area.
I have found that at smaller bookstores, much more than at larger ones ( same thing with hardware stores)</p>
<p>Let’s see-a company that invents some of the most popular new products ever versus one whose BIG IDEA was to help people become petty criminals and avoid the sales tax. I know whose side I am on.</p>
<p>Back to the B&N sales staff discussion: I don’t look down on their staff at all, and I know many of them are college graduates. I met one woman at our local store who had her master’s in library science (I do too), who was trying to find a job in that field. </p>
<p>What I object to is the general lack of knowledge about books and publishing in general for the average staff member. I have sometimes asked for a new nonfiction title or a currently popular title when I can’t remember the author. The staff person at the info desk is often just completely clueless about the whole literary field. Anyone working in a bookstore should familiarize themselves with the field. </p>
<p>And I have also had haughty staff people in the same store who think they are far above me in their knowledge, and that is just as irritating.</p>
<p>Wow! I am about to buy a new laptop for my D- the first apple computer in the family. But this anti-competitive thing apple is doing with the ebooks, increasing the prices for books on my kindle, irks me enough to reevaluate a PC option. Already cringing to pay the premium for an apple, which I am 51% persuaded to do because MAYBE apples are more safe and reliable and because apple is a “good” company, I don’t need much to send me running back to the lower priced PC. If apple pursues higher profit through price-fixing rather than genuine innovation maybe they don’t deserve my money.</p>
<p>Some years ago I had a medical emergency in a Barnes & Nobles bathroom & I have to say, they train their employees very well to handle that kind of thing.</p>
<p>They gave me a place to sit, let me use their phone to call my Dr, called 911 for me when the answering service told me to go to the ER (after 5 on Fri), were super efficient when the ambulance crew arrived, and the nice lady in the childrens book dept (where they took my young daughter to keep her occupied, and an employee watched her) gave my D a book for free to take on the ambulance. </p>
<p>I have all the usual gripes about the staff’s sometime lack of knowledge & their computer’s book look-up system, but we had an excellent experience that day.</p>