Now that Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6) came out Rebecca and I decided to invest in the whole Apple product range we use. Meaning that we needed new versions for the OS, iWorks and iLife. We have 3 Macs so the family package (5 licenses) is the way to go.

This package costs NZ $479 in the Apple store. In the US it costs US $229. Google tells me that that equates to about NZD $330. Ok….so what’s the $109 difference ($41 is sales tax)??? That is definitely a bit much for postage. So this is pure additional profit! For what? Living in NZ??? Is this the living-happily-in-NZ-tax??? I honestly feel conned by Apple. And I certainly wasn’t going to stand for it. So here’s the trick on how to save lots of dough….

Go to Amazon US and get search for Mac OS X there. You will find the family pack advertised for $199 (!!) or even less. Get it shipped to someone you know in the US and then get them to ship it out to NZ. Voila, you just saved $100+.

Apple is a cool company and I love their products and will keep on buying them but if they think they can fund cheap US sales by conning the rest of the world then their outa luck. I think this should even get investigated by the commerce commission. Wonder who I write to there…

Question is, whether it’s worth the money though. NZ$249 (family pack) is a tall order. If you’re like me and are just interested in iPhoto then it’s probably too much and you should hold out for the Upgrade Pack when Snow Leopard comes out. If you can use any of the other programs it’s probably OK to shell out so much money. It’s not really Apples fault things have gotten so expensive but then does that change things for me? Probably not. Let’s see what happens with Mac OS X 10.6.

I tried GIMP and it didn’t quite catch my fancy. I use it at work where I run Ubuntu but on the Mac it’s a little behind the times (not the features but the interface). So about a year back I got myself Pixelmator. At the time it was still version 1.0.x state. Even then it was already quite impressive. The current version is 1.3.2. Using most of the native and quick Apple CoreImage routines and the ImageMagic tool-set it really offers quite a bit to the amateur image editor. In Q1 2009 there will be the version 1.4 of Pixelmator and I can’t wait to see what goodies were added.

Pixelmator is not PhotoShop but it is enough for what most people need. In combination with iPhoto I think most of us have all bases covered. Pixelmator has a good chance of becoming a major contender. I hope they keep the price where it’s at currently and cater for the normal Mac users. So go and download the trial version and have a play.

As for the products I’m still experimenting but just the updates to iPhoto have made my day. Numbers (spreadsheet) really looks like something revolutionary for such an app. So now I’m going back o playing with my new apps….