[Rasta]

With the Australian dollar so strong now... and there is current talk of if it goes above 90c US (which appearently it's likely to) that it'll go to parity (i.e. A$1 = US$1).

I'm curious but is it likely that Apple's Hardware is going to get cheaper for us?

I've brought a couple of things from OS lately on the web and found it smarter (i.e. cheaper) to pay in US dollars than Euros.. surely a strong dollar has to have an effect on Mac prices sooner or later...

Thoughts??

[Phase]

Doubtful.

Most companies are playing off the fact that Australian customers are usedto paying X amount of mark up, completely independent of the actual dollar value. So why bother changing it? Pocket the difference, and most people are none the wiser.

Apple very rarely changes the price of a product once it has been released. And the initial splash price of the product is calculated with exchange rates prior to its launch. Great if the Aus dollar is strong, and SOTL if it's not.

It's a pretty lame position to be in, but there you go.

[coljac]

Actually, with the dollar getting stronger, the last few hardware revisions from Apple have seen prices come down a fair bit (e.g. Macbooks and Mac Minis). I think we will see the occasional downward revision. In the meantime, money can still be saved by importing in some cases.

I'm an exporter and the strong dollar sucks horribly for me. I suppose cheaper Macs would be a small consolation...

[pixelperfect]

I have been thinking about this exact thing... the idea i think is that it varys SO much, constantly up and down... that they work for the worse case scenario, so they don't loose money.

But I think we can safely say that if the economy stays the exactly same as it is now (no political suggestioning here at all), we should start to see some reductions, but they will still be working on the worse case scenario - the only difference that will be factoring AUD up around 0.90~1.00 dollars/US.

[Rasta]

From what I understand it's because the centre of the economic world now isn't the USA, China has the largest economy..

When all the sub prime mortgage stuff hit the stockmarkets around the world, China didn't budge, infact, China's market continued to go up...

..and it's apparently that reason why things are getting better for our dollar... are there any economists on here? is that the case? it's just from what I understand..

So, if China is now the centre of the economic world and our dollar is likely to be strong forever more, then why shouldn't we expect prices to drop? Surely we can't be screwed over by the US forever...

[Geoff3DMN]

Originally Posted by Rasta

I'm curious but is it likely that Apple's Hardware is going to get cheaper for us?

Well it has gotten cheaper with the latest round of machines compared to the earlier versions.

My base model macbook pro Core2Duo was over $3200 the replacement model is $2900.

The iMac 24inch was ummm $2900? $3000? They are $2600 now.

Similar price drops have happened across the range.

It's possible that there is still room for more drops though (might be a good time to buy here... can't see the Oz dollar staying this high past the shorter-medium term).

[Wally]

Macbooks have really dropped in price over the last few months.

Half what i paid for mine :/

[Kreats]

It isn't so much our dollar going up as the US dollar falling. Check the exchange rates vs euro and pound - haven't changed much. I'd imagine the USD price will go up rather than the AUD price come down.

[thorevenge]

The US has been living on a war based economy for he past few years. Support for the war is waning, and ironically so is the economy.

Don't count the US out though, Iran is still a threat .

As to economic powers, China is huge. It's esimated that something like only 2/3rds of Chinas real 'figures' are ever released. This means that China is something like 2nd or 3rd behind the US in terms of economic cashflow, which means its either right behind Japan or has beaten it,

Either way, China is great in terms of importing from - but export has too many intellectual property concerns to make it viable yet - although the Chinese govt is apparently working hard to correct this in order to provide a much more friendly face to the world.

Similar to the 2008 Games, China is slowly starting to open up to the world at large and becoming a Western nation...

[vanderlay]

It's not just hardware that they rip you off on.
Today I paid $39AUD for QuickTime MPEG-2 Playback from the Apple Store.
The same piece of software goes for $19USD in the US store.
The currency conversion works out that about $21.50 AUD.
Unfortunately I didn't have much choice if I want my new HDD video camera to work with imovie.