Apple’s cylindrical Mac Pro, which was announced earlier this year, went on sale overnight. It’s a striking machine with a striking price to match, but you’ll pay extra to buy one in Australia.
The entry-level Mac Pro model (3.7GHZ quad-core Intel Xeon E5 processor, 12GB of memory, 256GB of flash storage) costs $3999. The US price for the same model is $US2999. Convert that to Australian dollars at today’s exchange rate and then add 10 per cent for GST and it comes in at $3713.72. In other words, we’re paying $300 more in Australia for the same product.
A beefier version (3.5 GHz 6-core Intel Xeon E5 processor, 16GB of memory and 256GB of flash strage) is priced at $5299. The US price of $3999 converts to $4952.04 Australian (with GST included) — again, a roughly $300 difference.
Relative to the price of the machine itself, $300 isn’t an enormous amount. It’s also less than the difference was when we did the same calculations back when the machine was announced — at that point, it was closer to $600. That’s a reflection of the fact that exchange rates are volatile, but Apple sets its prices over a longer period.
Regardless of the gap, are you tempted to buy one?
Comments
21 responses to “Apple’s Mac Pro Attracts An Australia Tax”
Anyone who buys apple tech in oz deserves to be ripped off. Buy it online and get it shipped. In most cases express freight from the states arrives quicker than Aussie based services.
Anyone who buys an Apple product is dumb.
Hands down.
People have different uses for different products. It doesn’t make them stupid. Saying that, However…
Yeah, because my profitable effects business based on Apple gear is obviously a foolish endeavour.
If you purchase overseas and try to import, then expect to pay GST at 10% (for anything with a resale value of more than $1000), which would make it more expensive to import
They counted the GST in their estimate but isn’t there a 5% import duty as well?
How do you say “pass” but in the most offensive way possible?
Hasn’t gone on sale yet. Unless you’re looking somewhere I’m not.
Source: Online Apple Store.
Apple announcement says “later today”; guess the store elves are still busy.
No offence intended, just being a little pedantic whilst I regularly refresh the store/hoping you’d seen the CTO prices somewhere else.
I saw the announcement before I went to bed (1am AEST on the 19th) and assumed it would be up when I woke up, unfortunately so far no luck.
But that would be without the American tax, which varies from state-to-state, so the difference could be less than that, depending on which state you’re looking at.
Well, if you’re considering buying from the US, you’d have to be a complete loon to buy it in a state with sales tax, given the option to not pay sales tax.
Just sayin’.
I was more pointing out how the price gap would be slightly narrowed by sales tax in some states, but yeah, if you’re buying from the states,myou’d be best buying from a stae without tax.
Gotta say, this is not too bad an increase in price. If you were to buy this product overseas and ship it here, you would lose your warranty.
All things considered, probably the best bet to buy it here.
I think the design is amazing but design alone isnt going to sell me a $3999 computer
True, if you don’t need one. We have racks of drives connected via Thunderbolt to give us around 100TB of fast storage, and GPU cages full of cards to accelerate rendering. The Mac Pro is the cheap part of the equation in a studio environment. You pay for the performance and reliability and a platform that runs the software you need. This isn’t really an enthusiast’s machine, it is a 24/7 workhorse.
Do some research Angus. Bad attention grabbing headline which is wrong.
Here are some facts:
Made in USA = shipping cost difference
US price does not include sales tax
Apple considers currency fluctuation – which way is the AUD going?
Now write an apology.
Do some reading commenter. Article specifically mentions the tax issue and currency fluctuation.
Waiting for your apology, Lynxwildcat.
A 10% difference in price definitely when converting to the same currency seems more reasonable than the gaps in pricing that have traditionally existed for most anything for sale in Australia. When you consider the foreign exchange risk borne by the retailer, lack of economies of scale from distribution in a country the size of the continental US with less than 7% of the population, then add Australia’s much higher minimum wages, I don’t think price parity is ever realistic.
Ironically, this may be a fair price. As it’s made in the U.S> there’s your $300 shipping cost. When I bought my Mac Pro in 2010 the dollar has parity and it was made close by in SE Asia BUT it cost 28% more than the U.S. version. Unfortunatley I won’t be getting one as I can’t see myself hanging 6-8 devices with individual power plugs of the new Mac. Don’t want the house to burn down. Think I might max out the ram on my current Mac instead.