rocketpig said:
Yeah, $249 for an 80GB iPod is highway robbery. /sarcasm |
When you get apple hardware you're trading sexiness for functionality. The hardware is kind of expensive for the functionality you get -- you can find cheaper MP3 players that can play more formats, etc. The lower end is particularly where Apple keeps things more expensive. Look at the macbook air: there's no new technology there, it's just a bunch of existing technology packed into a sexier package than the other guys make.
With the iphone you pay a lot extra and don't even get a 3G phone. My coworker got a motorola a1200 from Hong Kong several years ago and it's smaller and sexier than the iphone with a touch-screen and a clear flip cover (so you can always see the main screen). It was also kind of rude of Apple to charge their early adopters $200 extra for the first month or so when they're still making over $1000 profit per iphone sold with a plan.
That said, Apple's laptop prices are among their most fair prices. If you want to see an example of the Apple tax, try buying some memory from them. We have some pretty old machines here with 16GB of memory that we got from a third party because the exact same memory (same manufacturer) cost 1/3rd as much from a non-apple vendor.
