Christopher Spring

I was a little surprised recently when i priced buying a new 17” Macbook Pro from local South African Mac suppliers. I discovered that it was cheaper to buy a return ticket to NY and buy the machine there, than it currently is to buy it here in South Africa.

Here are the numbers for flying to New York:

• R8,909.00 -> Return flight from Johannesburg to JFK in New York
• R23,791.50 -> Apple.com price for 17” Macbook Pro: $2,799.00 x R8.50/$
• R32,700.50 -> Total

You can have a look at a screenshot of the flight details i “booked” with SAA here.

The numbers for a local purchase:

• R32,999.00 -> 17” Macbook Pro through digicape.co.za
• R32,999.00 -> 17” Macbook Pro through zastore.co.za

At the time of writing this post the Rand Dollar exchange rate as reported by XE.com was R8.16 per US Dollar, but you’ll notice that i modified that to R8.50 above for the calculations.

So, am i the only who feels that maybe, just maybe, the South African population is being royally ripped off?