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Comment by Macha | Hacker News Reader

It's €1599 here for the M2 air, compared to €1229 for the M1 air.

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.

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The 20% increase or so is the VAT. The US shop shows prices without sales tax. In the EU the prices are VAT included.

VAT is in the old price too...

The US price increased 20% (999->1199). The change in exchange rate between USD and EUR adds another 10 percentage points. So the new price in EUR should* be about 30% more. The old price was €1229. Add 30% to €1229 and you end up at €1598.

So yes, Apple stiffed us for one Euro on the M2.

*Assuming the old EUR price was "correct" in some sense.

I hate to disagree with a highly knowledgeable and basically sound comment.

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.

I think you forgot to add your original point, there is an EU import fee for Apple to sell products in Europe, compared to the US, which is why tech is generally more expensive in the EU compared to the US.

Is VAT included in that markup or is that an additional cost? In the US, we don't have VAT, though most states do have Sales Tax which is not included in the price of the device.

VAT is indeed included in Apple's list prices.

The US price doesn't include tax. Take the tax off and you'll see that the pricing is much closer.

In Croatia it's 1700€!:

https://istyle.hr/13-inch-macbook-air-apple-m2-chip-with-8-c...

This is insane.

Don't think of it as a 25% difference. Think of it as a 15% difference, since in many places, Americans will also have to pay up to 10.5% sales tax.

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