Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Sachin Agarwal: My Memories of Apple

sachin.posterous.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 16 posts

Re: Sachin Agarwal: My Memories of Apple

#2

Post by rince »

"To pay off my college loans and car loan, I bought Macs from the bookstore and sold them on eBay. This consumed my life for about 3 weeks."

So you're the reason why they put the limits on education purchases.

Dick move.

Re: Sachin Agarwal: My Memories of Apple

#3

Post by Volpe »

rince wrote: post #2

"To pay off my college loans and car loan, I bought Macs from the bookstore and sold them on eBay. This consumed my life for about 3 weeks." So you're the reason why they put the limits on education purchases. Dick move.

Well (hopefully), now he'll be remembered as "the guy that ruined education discounts so he could buy an audi and have a free education"... Talk about over-privileged...

Re: Sachin Agarwal: My Memories of Apple

#4

Post by ghshephard »

rince wrote: post #2

"To pay off my college loans and car loan, I bought Macs from the bookstore and sold them on eBay. This consumed my life for about 3 weeks." So you're the reason why they put the limits on education purchases. Dick move.

I think it's actually quite clever, with very little downside, either morally or ethically.

The worst that happens is that they configure the education program so you can only buy one system a year (or some other such limitation) - which seems eminently reasonable for an education program.

As long as Apple was willing to sell unlimited numbers of Macintoshes in the bookstore for a discount, not sure why a clever and hard working person _wouldn't_ engage in a little arbitrage.

This is the kind of behavior you quite often see in successful startup founders, btw.

Re: Sachin Agarwal: My Memories of Apple

#5

Post by softbuilder »

Volpe wrote: post #3
rince wrote: post #2

"To pay off my college loans and car loan, I bought Macs from the bookstore and sold them on eBay. This consumed my life for about 3 weeks." So you're the reason why they put the limits on education purchases. Dick move.

Well (hopefully), now he'll be remembered as "the guy that ruined education discounts so he could buy an audi and have a free education"... Talk about over-privileged...

Better than being the guy who ruined education discounts to serve his meth habit.

Are education discounts ruined now? I haven't been in a college store in a while.

Re: Sachin Agarwal: My Memories of Apple

#8

Post by nikcub »

> I remember waking up one morning to find a strange man setting up a Mac LC II in my room. I don't know who he was or why we chose to buy an Apple computer, but on that day, history was made

So who was this guy? and, history being made? really? When I think about historic moments I think about the Berlin Wall, September 11, or the Japanese delegation boarding the USS Missouri in Tokyo Harbor to sign the surrender of Japan. I definitely don't associate it with some guy getting his first Mac

Re: Sachin Agarwal: My Memories of Apple

#9

Post by nikcub »

ghshephard wrote: post #4
rince wrote: post #2

"To pay off my college loans and car loan, I bought Macs from the bookstore and sold them on eBay. This consumed my life for about 3 weeks." So you're the reason why they put the limits on education purchases. Dick move.

I think it's actually quite clever, with very little downside, either morally or ethically. The worst that happens is that they configure the education program so you can only buy one system a year (or some other such limitation) - which seems eminently reasonable for an education program. As long as Apple was willing to sell unlimited numbers of Macintoshes in the bookstore for a discount, not sure why a clever and…

Except you are prioritizing your own short-term gain over the long-term benefit to a larger group of people. Apple would have figured it out very quickly and would have taken steps to regain control of their pricing.

It is a program that provides financial benefit to poor students in exchange for a moral obligation. I see it as being more akin to stealing from a charity rather than a savvy or smart business opportunity. Being entrepreneurial is about providing a product or service to people, but not doing it at the cost to all others. It takes zero imagination to take advantage of a goodwill initiative, all it requires is a lack of moral compass.

I was a super-poor student from a low income family and I relied on both educational discounts and financing to get access to my own computer - so to know now that the program was screwed with by guys who were not exactly starving students really pisses me off.

Post reply on HN