Australia, huh?
Threads like this are even more frustrating when they appear on Australian forums, because the local currency is also the "dollar."
So, innocent commenters, usually young (I'm not being ageist, just that they haven't had much travel experience yet), will comment things like:
"OMG! HomePod is $349 in America but $499 in Australia. RIPOFF!"
And then those of us who can bothered have to patiently explain...
Sales tax varies state by state and city by city in the US. It can be anything from 0% in Oregon to 8.5% in the city of San Francisco, and is usually not advertised in the list price.
So if you walk into the Apple Store Union Square in San Francisco, you'll actually pay $368.66 USD.
Sales tax (GST) is a flat 10% throughout Australia and by law must be included in the listed retail price, so the base price is usually adjusted to make a nice neat retail price. Without tax, $499 is $453.64.
Getting closer. Then the exchange rate applies.
Currently, one Australian dollar is worth around 80 US cents, (1.00 AUD = 0.80 USD), but varies day to day, week to week, month to month, depending on so many factors it would take an economics textbook just to list them, such as economic strength, monetary policy, currency trading, and whether certain presidents shoot their mouth off and contradict their own treasurer about future intentions, sending one currency up or down relative to their other. The AUD is been on a rise lately, but there's no guarantee it will continue to.
When a new product such as the HomePod hits the market, Apple typically prices it in the local currency according to something like a 30 day moving average, probably also with a small margin to allow for future currency fluctuations or to help cover a local required-by-law 2 year warranty.
So, say Apple worked out the
average exchange rate over the past month had been around 0.78, with a 0.01 margin just in case it drops back again (or the local required-by-law 2 year warranty), then using 0.77 as the exchange rate, they'd calculate the Australian price of the HomePod:
$349 USD divided by 0.77 exchange rate + 10% local tax = $498.57 AUD.
Let's call it $499, shall we.
Now, if the USD/AUD exchange rate varies drastically over the next 6 months, it could make the HomePod look more expensive ("ripoff") or cheap relative to other countries. Both situations can and do happen. For a while, Australia was the cheapest place to buy an iPod, and conversely, at times the most expensive place to buy a Mac Pro.
For the iMac Pro, the local price was set well over a month ago when the Australian dollar was weaker, but even so the above calculation makes it look fair value:
$4999 USD divided by 0.77 exchange rate + 10% local tax = $7141.42 AUD.
The actual retail price is $7299. Hardly a ripoff.
Apple prefers not to change prices on a day to day basis, so the longer the product has been on the market, the more the expected cost will diverge. (If it gets cheap enough that you could jump on a plane and buy a suitcase full of Apple products to resell in the US, then Apple will indeed adjust the price -- my Mac Pro changed price 3 times in the 4 years I've owned it, that's an extreme case though as usually the same product doesn't stay on the market unchanged for that long.)
TLDR; No, you're not getting ripped off.
