Apple Store Pricing Sucks

OK, it's time for grumble.

I was looking at purchasing Aperture 1.5 from Apple. I'm not a professional photographer, but I do take a lot, and Picasa on Windows and iPhoto on the Mac don't seem to cut it for me. I wanted something more stable (iPhoto takes ages to load with 5 years of photo's in it).

So, I took at look at the UK Apple store and it was listed at £219 inc tax. Not bad, I know it was originally over £2000. Just out of interested I pulled up the US Apple Store. $299.

Hang on, I though. That's like £160. So I added a Florida Zipcode (relatives house) to the basket, and got a final price of $319.

To cut a long story short, I checked out the US, UK and Ireland Stores, and found the following pricing differences.

Store	USD	GBP	Euro
US	$319	£168	€251
UK	$415	£219	€327
Ireland	$404	£213	€319

Pricing correct as of 26/09/2006. Conversion prices from www.xe.com/ucc

So, the UK and Ireland pretty much on the same price. But there's a massive gap between them and the US. Taking the above, the UK difference to the US is over £50! That means that UK Aperture user are paying a 24% premium for the same package.

I rang the UK Apple store and spoke to someone about the pricing. They tried the "The US tax is less" trick, but that didn't wash, as the untaxed price is still a lot different. They then admitted that the US prices just were cheaper. When I intimated that I had friends who regularly travelled to the US, he admitted that it would be cheaper for them to buy it for me, and that it would work perfectly well on my Mac.

Does anyone else think that Apple are taking the piss? Talk about rip-off Britain (and Ireland this time).

Technorati: Aperture | Apple | Apple Store | Ripoff | pricing | apple software