| Usually it was started by saying Apples were
| "overpriced" or similar comment. Yet, when someone actually sat down,
| and specced out a Windows computer using comparable internal components,
| the price difference dropped dramatically. Yes, Apples were still more
| expensive, but there are things you get from Apple you don't get from
| Microsoft and probably Linux. When was the last time you walked into a
| Dell store for help? Or an HP store? How many malware issues are there
| with Windows compared to OS X?
|
| There's more to making a purchasing decision than just money. My iMac
| display is still superior to any Windows display I've seen,.....

I don't think you really have to look far to see that
Apple charges "through the nose". They have no direct
competition. I remember when iMacs first came out.
A friend bought one. He spent a total of $2,700, with
the printer and whatever else he needed to set it up --
for a 1-piece box with no upgradeability other than
the RAM.

That was around the time that Apple stopped installing
floppy drives. I asked AppleSeed friends if that didn't
bother them. I always got the same party line in response:
"Floppies are outdated. Nobody uses them anymore.
Steve Jobs is a genius. He understood that." If Steve
Jobs stole their wallet they'd call him a genius.

Meanwhile, I read an article saying that including a
floppy drive would have cost Apple about $7.50 per box.
Then Microcenter started featuring blue, USB external
floppy drives for Macs. $100. They sold like hotcakes.
Every Mac owner had to have one.

Their new connector design has forced people to
buy new, wildly overpriced cables.

I'm actually using a PC now partly because of Apple
pricing. When I first used a computer it was a Mac.
I shared a friend's AOL account. It was fun. When I
decided to buy a computer myself I went to Microcenter.
"Mac or PC?", asked the clerk. I thought they were just
2 brands. "What are the prices?", I asked. The cheapest
Mac was $2,200. The cheapest PC was an eMachines
for $500. What about software? The area for Windows
software was like a gymnasium. Then there was a small
room for Mac software, all of which cost more than the
Windows version. My decision was made for me.

Many apple fans are not even capable of comparing
comparable components. Remember the snail ads? Apple
was claiming their IBM CPUs could run circles around
Intel CPUs because of their extra cache, even when it
got to where PCs were running 1 GHz CPUs while Mac
CPUs were still down around the 300 MHz range. Finally
even Apple admitted their CPUs were nothing special,
and changed to Intel.

Do a search on the cost of manufacturing iPhones. The
results I find are that the total cost is $200+ while the
retail price is $600+. That's done with virtual slave labor
in China while the income is kept offshore to avoid taxes.

Apple is a sleazeball company, no matter how you look
at it. But I don't mean to single them out. Microsoft has
become one of the biggest companies in the world by
ruthlessly maintaining a monopoly on the grossly overpriced
software of Windows and Office. Pretty much everything
else they do loses money. (I think XBox broke even recently,
but I'm not sure the total cost of XBox since the beginning
has been recouped.)

Even without all the facts and figures, there's a glaring,
basic inconsistency that calls the operations of many tech
companies into question: They're among the top earners
of all companies worldwide. Yet Microsoft just nurses their
software monopoly and Apple makes gadgets. That doesn't
add up. And why is Bill Gates the richest man in the world?
What did he do to deserve such wealth? Last I heard
Microsoft had an $8 billion yearly "research" budget. That's
$100K per year for, say, 60,000 people, if you figure they
somehow spend $2B on materials.