Georg Roden, of the Mac User Group in the city of Kassel, called Cupertino too "America-centric." Most users won't notice this, but Roden explained that the well-hidden command-line interface in the Unix portion of Mac OS X doesn't support umlauts, those little dots over a's, u's, and o's found in many German words.

Another goof that went unnoticed by many was when Apple, in the summer of 2002, forgot to renew its Apple.de domain name. It was snapped up by a printer supplies company that later surrendered the domain at no charge, but not before making Apple look careless.

A much larger deterrent is the price of Macs. A new iMac costs 1,507 EUR (about $ 1,526) in Germany and $1,199 in the US, while the G4 costs 2,203 EUR (about $2,230) to America's $1,699. Think that's bad? "Because of taxes, Macs are more expensive in most other European countries than in Germany," said Schobess. Roden reported that spare parts are "very expensive." Apples are pricey but at least easier to find in Germany's major consumer electronics stores than they were two years ago, though Reitermeyer reported that stores often "don't have trained personnel for Macs."

Both graphic designers and general users report that almost all programs they need have been translated into German. However, some users complain that early software versions aren't as well-tested as their Windows counterparts.

Like in the US, Mac software is sometimes crowded out by Windows offerings. IT analyst and market researcher Thomas Lünendonk reported visiting a leading retailer and seeing "20 meters of Windows applications offered and less than half a meter of Apple software - mostly games."