Thinking about buying an SSD as about the best possible upgrade to any computer? I certainly am, so imagine my delight when I compare the differences in price of buying the drive in, say, Japan, and my wonderful Australia!
Japan: ¥45,885 (AUD$550)
Australia: around $800
A nice $250 Australia Tax there.
The government finally told Telstra to break up or be broken up, in preparation for the NBN.
I have been waiting for this day for 15 years!
The old proposal to build a partial (FTTN) broadband network for Australia has been dumped, replaced by a much larger, better plan – a $43b fibre to the home network, to bring 100Mbps network access to 90% of Australian homes. Here is the announcement.
That’s $2,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. That’s a huge amount. To put it into perspective, the same expenditure in the USA would be roughly $600b.
Putting aside the fact that this is desperately needed in AU’s miserable internet market – this is exactly what a government should be doing at a time like this. Spending huge amounts on wisely chosen infrastructure projects is just the ticket to pull a country out of recession, IMO.
And needless to say, this is the beginning of the end for that hated monopoly Telstra, who will be lefting holding nothing but their crappy 50-year-old legacy copper POTS.
Fantastic.
Australian ABC’s new iView internet service, in which they offer good-quality streaming flash video of most of their interesting shows, is fantastic. ABC is Australia’s tax-funded government broadcasting system; it’s generally pretty good.
This is exactly what I want ABC to be doing with my tax dollars. We pay for all this content to be made, it should be available free to everyone on the net, in good quality, at any time. This first version is an excellent start. It’s still a bit slow and the quality could be better, but I’m sure that will come in time. Much better than the BBC’s “iPlayer” application. Now hopefully they will drastically increase not only the quality but the range and back catalogue, and add more download options.
Now if only SBS would offer something similar – that is the only other channel worth watching on Australian television and as soon as they do so I won’t be able to see much point owning a television at all.
Check it out if you’re interested in watching Australian taxpayer-funded TV programming. ABC News, 4 Corners and Foreign Correspondent are best for news. If you’re after comedy, the Chaser is currently on break but The Gruen Transfer is high quality.
Oh, and it’s unmetered for iiNet : ) Internode to unmeter it soon too, apparently.
What the hell is going on with Starbucks?
They are closing 61 out of their 84 locations in Australia, but I can’t see why. One of the locations due to be closed I know very well, it’s Starbucks in Chatswood – a rich suburb and it’s the only Starbucks there. I walk past it a lot and it’s always full.
How can you lose money selling $6 coffee to rich Chinese 16 hours a day? I had assumed they were raking in the cash. The Taiwanese tea shop across the road has premises twice as large, charges less, has half the patronage, and they’re doing fine. No other shops around are closing.
Sure, American businesses sometimes misjudge the Australian market. Krispy Kreme has struggled here, discovering belatedly that oil-soaked donuts are not exactly part of the staple diet here – but even so the KK store in Chatswood is still doing fine after downsizing. And it’s not like coffee is unpopular; quite the opposite. In fact I noticed a new café opened just last week, very close to the SB. Something doesn’t add up!
Anyway, my favourite branches (Darling Harbour and George St) will be staying open so it’s not like I care all that much – just amazed that anyone could possibly lose money with such a seemingly foolproof brand. Starbucks Inc has obviously screwed something up in a big way Stateside and are cutting back international operations as a result. Wonder if the Japan stores are next.
UPDATE:
I’ve been thinking about this some more, and factoring in my own purchasing habits to understanding SB’s problems in AU.
Let’s think about my purchasing patterns:
Number of times I have bought prepared beverages, hot or cold, outside the house in the last year: maybe 100+
Number of purchases from Boost Juice: 30+
Number of purchases of pearl milk tea or other chinese drink: 20+
Number of purchases of coffee from a non-SB café: 50+
Number of purchases from Starbucks: uh, 1 or 2, I forget, both green tea frappucinos in summer
I think that, upon further reflection, I am beginning to see the problem.
Maybe Starbuck’s competition in Australia is much stronger than in the USA, or indeed Japan. Here, if I want coffee, I very rarely buy it from SB. There are plenty of other cafés around, and generally their coffee is better than SB.
If I want a cold drink, I will usually buy either a fruit drink from Boost or some kind of chinese pearl milk tea. Both are delicious, Boost is healthy, and both are cheaper than SB. Also more convenient, open later, and I know some very nice bubble tea places with nice gardens to sit and read.
Basically Boost wins over SB 9 times out of 10. If I’m going to pay $5 or more for a drink, I want to actually get something for my money – my favourite drink from Boost has a banana and yoghurt, sweetened with honey and plenty of milk. SB is little more than water, flavour, corn syrup and crushed ice. I like it sometimes, sure, but when I think about how often I actually buy that – not very.
I drank SB much more in Japan and I think that’s where I started thinking I liked it more than now. But upon reflection I only drank it so much there because there simply wasn’t anything else. Plus, it’s cheaper there, and the stores are open later. I remember wishing they had Boost there, and some better coffee places too – now I’m in AU I simply go to them instead.
Maybe SB isn’t such a sure fire success in Australia after all.
UPDATE 2:
Some good analysis here and .
Good news for those following Australia’s 2004 submission to the UNCLOS Commission for extension of the recognised continental shelf of Australia – the claim has been upheld. Find the full submission , so you can see the new boundaries.
The new claim covers over 2.7 million sqkm, not including a placeholder claim staking out continental shelf around the Australian Antarctic Territory.
Mackie, I love you but why are your prices in Australia so unbelievably high?
Check this out. I’d love to pick up a pair of your new MR5s for my home setup (I already have some HR824s, and they’re awesome). So I look at the prices.
USD $150 each at sweetwater
AUD $400 each at online stores here
A current currency conversion: 150 U.S. dollars = 163.51 Australian dollars.
Don’t bother pulling out your calculators, that’s a 245% increase AFTER currency conversion. Someone is making a killing here, and it’s your brand that looks like an absolute rip-off. And don’t say it’s shipping, they’re made in China and Australia is *closer*.
I know the Australian distribution is probably not really your #1 concern but please can someone at least take a look at it? These guys are making off like bandits. I don’t mind paying a little more since we’re a smallish market, but how could anyone pay that much more? Two and a half times as much is insane. If you wonder why you don’t have any customers here, now you know – your local distribution partners are ripping you off blind, and as for the customers – we all know how to find US prices, and we all know the AUD is practically equal to the USD.
Would *you* pay a 245% premium, no matter how much you like Mackie?
Well, anyway, thanks and I just wanted to get this off my chest. Great work on all the products as usual, I love them. Just please fix the pricing situation in Australia : (
thanks a lot!
Sho
Man, I love Australian politics. I don’t know any other parliament in the world where the opposition would do something like this:
That’s a life-size cardboard cut-out of the current PM of Australia. Lol.
I have a pair of the fantastic Mackie HR824 MKI monitor speakers. They’re great, easily the best midprice monitor speaker on the market, in my opinion.
So naturally I was interested when the MKII was announced, especially since my MKIs are sitting thousands of kilometres away! And with the , surely the price would be reasonable, right?
WRONG!
Price in America: USD$599 = AUD$625.23 each = AUD$1,350.46 for a pair.
Price in Australia: AUD$2,999 for a pair.
The speakers are identical save the localised power cable. Voltage is switchable on the back. The Australian price is 220% of the American for the exact same fucking thing.
Fuck you, Australian distributors. The only way I’d pay you more than double the proper market price for a pair of these is if it included a free kick right in your useless, greedy faces.
UPDATE: annoyingly, on the mk2 the voltage is NOT switchable on the back, locking us into the Euro or AU model. I don’t know any good EU online stores but the list price is EUR€599, about AUD$995 each. I wonder what they cost in China – where all this stuff is made.
Anyway, the price difference with the US model would easily cover a huge stepdown transformer.
It infuriates me that these power compatibility issues even exist! It all just gets turned into DC internally anyway. Why isn’t there a range of standard interchangeable transformer modules on all electronics? Then they could just make the same thing a million times, and slot the module in as required. Methinks the savings gained by doing that would be outweighed by the arbitrage-style profits lost by being able to segment the markets, DVD Region style.