Peter Kafka

Recent Posts by Peter Kafka

Harry Potter and the Astonishing iTunes Price Mix-Up

Much to Hollywood’s dismay, home video watchers are increasingly disinterested in buying movies.

But if you price these things really, really low, you’ll find some takers. Hence a flurry of interest this morning when the Internet discovered that Apple’s iTunes store was selling all eight “Harry Potter” movies for an astonishing $10.

Except it turns out that Apple — or more precisely Warner Bros., which sets the prices for its movies — didn’t mean to practically give its stuff away. The $10 price is now gone, replaced by a cheap-but-more-plausible $60.

itunes harry potter bundle

I’ve asked Apple for comment, but I assume that if they have one, it’s along the lines of “Oops. Our bad.”

Meanwhile, other iTunes bundle pricing remains intact. For instance, you can still get “Godfather” I and II for $20; sadly, the bundle also includes the last “Godfather.”

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Another gadget you don’t really need. Will not work once you get it home. New model out in 4 weeks. Battery life is too short to be of any use.

— From the fact sheet for a fake product entitled Useless Plasticbox 1.2 (an actual empty plastic box) placed in L.A.-area Best Buy stores by an artist called Plastic Jesus