Let’s say you’re an Australian in the market for a quad-core Apple Mac Pro.
You could rock down to your nearest Apple Center and hand over A$4,999.
Or you could jump on a plane in Sydney, fly to Los Angeles, buy the same computer, have a look around LA, catch the next flight home, AND BE ABOUT A$1,200 BETTER OFF — less the cost of your day trip around LA.
Yeah, I know all the justifications: freight, exchange rates, blah blah blah. What a load of unmitigated crap!
Talk about a blatant rip-off. I swear I will never buy so much as an iPaperclip from one of their Australian outlets until Apple stops this predatory “foreign” pricing. A reasonable allowance for freight and exchange rate fluctuations is fair enough, but the current pricing is nothing short of absurd.
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
…Typical of the Apple ‘core’ – I would never buy any ‘i’ or ‘mac’ product on principle. In my opinion, they are overhyped and overpriced. The markets are full of equal or better products at more reasonable prices.
Time was (long ago) Mac was used in all the elementary schools around here. I considered purchasing one but the fact remained it was twice as expensive as a PC and totally proprietary for any and all peripherals. That was a “no-go”.
While they have had their production mishaps like everyone else, there is no doubt that Apple computers are quality hardware, and their move to Intel processors was a significant step towards more universal acceptability.
However, Apple wasn’t accepted into so many educational establishments on the basis of quality and buyer research. Their policy has always been to indoctrinate the young, so they gave away millions of dollars worth of equipment to educational institutions.
I’m not anti-Apple per se, and I’m certainly not claiming that Windows 7 is an Apple killer (though it is a significant step in the right direction). But with respect to the sort of applications that won over the arty, academic and publishing markets, the gap is closing — has closed in many cases.
These days there is very little that an Apple can do better than a much cheaper PC, despite the rabid insistence of the Steve Jobs acolytes.
The Apple OS, user Interface and general look & feel is arguably still more friendly than Windows for the novice user, but that gap is also closing rapidly.