Australia fights with Apple on pricing

MacTalk founder Anthony Agius put together a spreadsheet comparing Australian Apple pricing with US pricing, and gives a fairly decent argument regarding this as well.

http://anthonywrites.posterous.com/apple-tax-for-australians-pffffft

Does anyone know why the prices in UK seem so inflated? For example the iPad 2 in the us retails at $499 in the UK it's £399, but convert $499 to Sterling and it's £302, The MacBook air retails in the us for $999, in the uk it's £849, but again when the $ are converted to £ it's £605. Sot thats £244 to ship over the pond? or taxes? Anyone know?

This is potentially an important story, but clearly there's a lot of confusion and not much solid, confirmable, reliable information. Maybe it's time TUAW made (or linked to) a chart breaking down all these prices into their constituent elements (tax duties etc) Then all this trolling can stop.

Yeah Mike, Aussies paying a few hundred dollars more for the same product is just "rabble rousing".

Maybe you could pull your Apple loving head out of the sand for just a minute and think. Maybe, even, TUAW could take a stand in principle on behalf of all Mac users globally. If the situation was reversed, would it still be rabble rousing or are you just a total tool?

To the numerically challenged below, $1199 vs $999 for the thunderbolt display is more than 10%. And why are you so afraid of criticism of your precious brand? Do you have so little personal identity that you mistake criticism of Apple for yourself?

I have an iMac, Apple TV, Time Capsule, iPhone, iPad and iPods and enjoy using ALL of them, yet I am glad that Apple is put under the spotlight on pricing practices and the same should apply to Adobe, Microsoft and other tech companies.

Sent from my over priced, rabble rousing iPad.

Apple has got much better with their "tech tax" in recent years but it can still be ridiculous.

Here in New Zealand I would like to buy a BTO mac pro which BEFORE Sales Tax comes to NZ$ 16371. At today's exchange rate that is US$ 13383.

The same BTO mac pro in the States, before sales tax so it's a fair comparison, US$ 10447.

That's almost US$ 3000 difference for the same product. For all those people saying that Apples prices are justified because of import duties, shipping costs, sales tax etc, - I can get Fed Ex to ship me this computer from the US for $450. Even after paying import duties and taxes I will have saved US$ 1500. And that's with personal shipping! You really think Apple would be getting a bulk discount on that.

As other people have said, Apple get away with this because they can. They are by no means the only company doing it, but they are a high profile so they get the negative publicity. Apple need to realise that the US might be their biggest Market, but given that they are only 5% of the world population it would probably do them some good to think about the rest of us as well. Even little old NZ.

I really hope the Aussi government gets their way - would really set a precedent. Canadians have been fighting this issue on many fronts (not just Apple products) for years and hopefully with this our government will start to fight it. Our dollar is in fact STRONGER than the US dollar yet we pay more on all products sold by US companies.

Apple TV - $119 CAD vs. $99 US
iPod Shuffle - $59 CAD vs. $49 US
8 GB Nano - $159 CAD vs. $149 US

and the list goes on and on....

this is also true in Europe, where the currency is 40% higher that in USA, and the prices in dollars are the exact same in Europe, for example, the entry level MacBook is $999 USD and is €999 in Europe, but you are actually paying $1,398.60 USD.

I'm an Aussie and I'm also an Apple nut (have only ever owned Mac computers, also own an iPhone and an iPod). In recent times Apple has gone a long way to reducing the discrepancy between US and AU prices in terms of Macs and Apps (we used to get gouged for our Macs) - the one area where we are still getting gouged is on iTunes. An album that sells for $14.99 in the US sells for $19.99 here. The songs from that album are $1.29 each in the US, $2.19 each here. But I think this has much to do with our retarded music labels as it does with Apple.

What a crock! Apple actually has been very good to Aussies on pricing. It has been under a year since the Australlian dollar has been on parody and exceeded the value of the US dollar. Less than a year! But even in that short amount of time every product refresh has had a substantial price reduction for Australia, MacBook Pro, iMac, iPad 2, Mac Mini, MacBook Air, all cost less this year then did last year. Look it up, the iPod line up all were reduced as were iTunes and app store content earlier this year. That's a company responding to the market and no other companies have even come close to doing the same.

But that's not good enough. Never mind Apple is a US company, who must pay to import their products into the country. Never mind that this time last year the American dollar was stronger than the Australian dollar and had been since the dawn of time. Never mind Australia is an island economy where everything costs more because it must be imported in, never mind by the time state sales tax is added to US Apple pricing it is ver close to AU pricing with GST already included with their price, and of course let's forget the Australian Apple online store has free shipping on anything you buy from it, even a $20 dollar adapter, every other Apple online store requires a minimum, even the US Apple online store,

It's political hogwash, politicians bloaviating to stroke their own accomplishments that they are behind Australians recent economy turn around. I cannot imagine why Apple would not want to jump in the middle of a dog and pony show to be the sacrificial bird,

Apple apparently hasn't answered back the Australian government just yet

That sounds very awkward.

How about:

Apple hasn't responded to the Australian government yet...