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I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. I even said myself that “the MBP will never be sold in SA for R10000”. But still. While everyone has been holding their breath for the new iPhone and 3.0 OS, I was secretly hoping that I’d finally be able to afford the new 13” Apple Macbook Pro. But I won’t. And neither will many South Africans, come to mention it. And all the blame for that goes to Core.

The Core Group, you see, is the official and exclusive importer and distributor of Apple Computer in South Africa, and has been since the early Eighties. All Apple distribution in South Africa, then, is operated independently of Apple Inc., but rather by Core, including but not limited to iStores, and even the online ZAstore. Any Apple products which are not distributed by Core are so-called ‘grey imports’, being as they were not brought into South Africa by the approved route. Essentially, then, Core receive the products from Apple under their exclusivity agreement, and then set the prices for the South African market. And they’re ripping South African consumers off in a big way.

Maths has never been my biggest strongpoint, but let’s take a few examples of Apple prices as listed by the official Apple online store, and compare them to Core’s prices according to the most recent pricelist I received from them as a registered dealer. According to today’s exchange rate, $1 will cost you 8.04 Rand, but I can only assume that Core allows for some flexibility in the exchange rate (perfectly reasonably so), so I’ll set it at a very liberal R9 = $1 (it’s easier on my mathematical ability, too).

And then the new stuff…

On the new Macbook Pro line we’re talking an average markup of around 25%, remembering that these are:

a)      Assuming a very generous exchange rate

b)      At absolute cost price!!

c)      And, most importantly, that Core is not paying the retail Apple prices.

So this markup profit is in addition to the markup on the wholesale price they pay to Apple Inc.

Essentially, I would not be at all surprised if the real markup was more in the region of 50%, and that’s before it even reaches South African dealers, who then charge their markup, too. For a more realistic idea of what Apple products will set you back in South Africa, head along to ZAstore.

While I understand that Core pays shipping costs and taxes on their imported products, it’s also equally important to remember that it also benefits from economies of scale, in the sense that it is less expensive to import a few thousand products than it is to import two. There is no way that their markup can be justified.

The effect of this goes far beyond a mere ripoff of consumers. It is having a real and negative effect on the Apple brand in South Africa. Not only are people turning away from Apple in favour of competitors’ products, but consumers are turning to so-called ‘grey’ Apple products. So much so that Core themselves started a StopGrey campaign to warn people about the possible consequences of buying Apple products which are not distributed through them.

So what do we do about it? Well you hope that Apple realize what Core is doing to their brand in South Africa, and avoid Core and iStores where you can, and instead buy grey products where you are sure that you’ll have some form of international warranty.

I’ll be doing my little bit by selling Apple products at absolute cost price so that at least the iStores won’t make profit, too.

You can sign our very own Twitition asking Core to explain and justify their product pricing structure here…

I own the latest generation iPod. In black. It’s awesome. It’s also the only Apple product I own. So you can hardly call be obsessed, but for some reason I was giddy with excitement about this year’s WWDC keynote address last night. So much so that I watched the entire thing via liveblog. And was pleasantly surprised, too.

To be perfectly honest, I can’t say I was expecting a great deal. Snow Leopard, obviously, was a given and was always gonna be great – they’re yet to release an OS that isn’t. We all knew that iPhone 3.0 was gonna be released, but I wasn’t expecting much from it. But what really threw me was the announcement of the 3GS.

Let’s start at the very beginning, though. Julie Andrews says that’s the best place, after all.

Nothing mindblowing about the Macbook Pro (MBP) upgrades really. Still wouldn’t mind one of the top-of-the-line one’s though – 3Ghz, 500GB, discrete graphics, 8GB memory – that’s a hugely powerful notebook. The one big upgrade that does make a difference, though, is the battery. Very few times have I cursed my laptop for not having 500GB of storage, but I have countless times for it running out of juice after short of 2 hours. 7 hours – that’s more like it! The best news of all, though, was something I didn’t expect – the 13” MBP. Backlit keyboard, Firewire 800, SD slot, and the 7hr battery – wow! The best part, though, is that at $1199, it’s an affordable MBP. That ZAstore is gonna be seeing a lot of traffic from me. Incidentally, it’s down at the moment. (edit: it’s back up now, but no sign of new products yet)

Onto Snow Leopard. You just know it’s going to work. So not much to say here, really. Except that they took a good bash at Windows 7, and for the first time I felt a bit defensive. I’ve used it, you see, and I quite like it, really. I think they’ve got it right. But Apple has made a very smart differentiating move by including Exchange. And it’s 64bit – so it’ll be quicker than ever before – awesome. Enough about the OS itself. More big news at the announcement of OpenCL, though. We’ll wait to see how it works out, but an Apple-developed open standard is a pretty cool concept, isn’t it?

I downloaded and used Safari last night, on my Windows machine. It’s cool. But not enough for me to not be using Chrome 2 today. I really like the Coverflow integration, though, so maybe I’ll go back to it. But my feelings are that it’s awesome browser, but probably not worth the effort if you are running a machine with anything better than IE.

Right, now the interesting stuff. iPhone 3.0. First up, copy & paste – no surprises there, but that’s a small thing that will make plenty of people happy. Same with MMS. Then again, with Twitpic/Facebook/Posterous etc, and even YouTube (more on that later), allowing uploads from your phone to the world as large, I think MMS is mostly starting to lose appeal. Tethering is one of the most useful things to have on any cellphone, so it’s about time that the iPhone supported it. No support by AT&T at launch, but Vodacom will, I am told. Good move there. HTML5 support. It’s all the Wave at the moment. Form autofill – nice touch. Cool stuff up next. ‘Find my iPhone’ – the ability to see where your iPhone is via Google Maps and remotely erase all your email – that’s just cool! One little problem, though. A MobileMe subscription costs $99, and that’s a lot of money – I don’t know many people who have it. Without it, Find my iPhone won’t be any use. Moving on, push notifications is something we’ve all been waiting for a while – no surprises it was included. Plenty of new app support stuff (it was a developers conference, after all). The concept behind Airstrip – the ability for doctors to remotely monitor patients vitals etc using their iPhones – is one of the things that excited me most. That’s something that has the potential to be really important. And last, but not least, TomTom finally to be supported. Once again, not a huge surprise there, but that’s a really cool addition.

Perhaps what surprised me most, though, is the release date. The Apple software server, strangely, was down during the keynote, and this confirmed everyone’s expectations that the release would be available immediately. Not so. I’m afraid iPhone 3G owners all over the world will be waiting till the 17^th to get their hands on a new OS. And it will be well worth the wait. It’s a big release for a company who released the 3G not even a year ago. And it really is worth a lot of excitement – it’s a massive upgrade to an already pretty sorted OS.

I was secretly hoping that Steve Jobs would walk onto stage brandishing a brand new exquisite phone, I suppose. But didn’t expect it. And yet, the 3GS still went beyond my expectations.

It’s twice as fast. It supports the 7.2 HSDPA network. To be honest, most consumers don’t care. A 3 megapixel camera with video ability, autofocus, autoexposure, auto white balance, ability to tap on parts of a framed shot to focus on them, on screen editing, and ability to directly upload to a variety of services. Now that is something they care about. Voice control – nothing new, but a nice touch. A built-in digital compass. At this announcement, you can actually hear somebody have a stroke from excitement. Why? How often have you been wandering along with your cellphone and thought “I wish I had a f*%&ing compass”. Really, who cares. But back to the battery life. That’s a massive improvement on the 3G – especially considering the extra power demands of a faster processor, etc. I wonder how OS 3.0 is gonna affect the standard 3G’s battery life. Let’s be honest, the 3GS is an awesome improvement on an awesome phone. Would I upgrade from my standard 3G? No. Would I pay the extra to get a 3GS instead? I’d think about it. A lot. As long as it doesn’t say ‘3GS’ on it anywhere. It really is a stupid name.

The biggest announcement, though, is something that ran through the whole keynote – common to all of Apple’s announcements. Pricing.

iPhone 3G at $99? 13” MBP at $1199? Snow Leopard at $29? Perhaps I can finally afford to live out my Apple fantasies. Except for the fact that the 3G’s will no longer be sold in SA, the MBP will never be sold in SA for R10000, and I don’t have an Apple OS to upgrade. Damn.