The price has gone up dramatically, well above inflation, at least where I live, so I would argue it is not better in every regard. For most people the M1 MacBook Air is a much better investment while Apple has them in stock.
I grew up in the US and have now lived in Canada for more than 15 years.
Unless your country has VAT or other import taxes, you can easily just take the USD value of the Apple product you are trying to buy and convert it to your currency. The price of the product will match up exactly with the value of your dollar in the last 2-4 months.
2011-2013 was a great time for Apple product buyers in Canada, the dollar was nearly at parity for a short time. And then 2 years later, every Apple product increased in price by 20%. My salary didn't go up. Inflation didn't hit Canada particularly hard.
Apple has a strict profit margin they are targeting, and if your dollar goes down in value, and they will simply ask you to pay up.
Where do you live? Currency value changes perhaps?
This is compared to US prices of $999 and $1199. The euro has weakened relative to the dollar for sure, but that's as much driven by the dollar being relatively strong and let's be real, most of apple's costs are in yuan anyway. And also the difference between $1 = €0.90 and $1 = €1 is not sufficient to account for a 25% increase in costs. If Macs were already low-margin items you could say it's just adding in padding for future currency movement that had been diminished over a longer time period (say 5 years ago when $1 = €0.80), but it's not like they are low-margin.
To perhaps add some context: I pay for my own health insurance under ACA/Obamacare, and the most expensive one is also the minimum one where I can keep my doctor. It’s around 1200 USD a month counting dental.
I’m not rich off stock options or anything, I fucking notice it missing every month, but in a world where healthcare/internet/phone/etc. is more than the rent I split with one other guy 10 years ago?
It’s not 200-500 USD every few years for the big SSD from Apple that’s breaking my back.
I can get the best personal computer ever for less than my healthcare and phone bill? It’ll still be pretty great 3-5 years from now?
This is one of the few places where I don’t feel economically over a barrel.
So yes, Apple stiffed us for one Euro on the M2.
*Assuming the old EUR price was "correct" in some sense.
https://istyle.hr/13-inch-macbook-air-apple-m2-chip-with-8-c...
This is insane.