Quote Originally Posted by Psychonaut View Post
Indeed. It's all about being able to price their machines at excessive levels. A competitor would lose them money, but be good for consumers. But, they wouldn't allow that now would they.
I'm probably going to waste my breath here, but there's been a number of articles that show like for like, Apple products are often quite comparable with similar Windows based machines.

Anyway, it hardly matters if they aren't. There's nothing excessive about the price - the price is what someone is willing to pay. Rather a lot of people like to pay the asked price for an Apple product - and it's not simply that they are somehow stupid or brainwashed.

One can buy a Ferrari, or a Fiat. Basically, the two makes do the same job and in many cases, share components. One might sneer at anyone who might buy the Ferrari for being a fool, but enough people are willing to pay the premium to make it a successful business. Image may well be a big part of it, but if people want products that boost their self-image, why shouldn't this be a vaild reason to exploit the market? (Often of course, image comes associated with a real quality product too). Similarly with Apple, whose profits have risen quite well (along with my shares, which have more than doubled over the last six months - full disclosure )

Apple has competitors, lots and lots of them and they practically put the company out of business. They re-invented themselves, and are now doing pretty well in a very competitive market. Just as Ferrari are not keen to have an engine badged with the Prancing Horse gracing a Korean import, Apple don't seem to be keen on any old piece of cobbled together junk using their OS. Guess whose reputation gets knocked about if OSX doesn't work well on a cheapie Hackintosh? Windows gets a terrible rep often because it has to work with a million different combinations of hardware - but it isn't the Chinese sweatshops who suffer, but Microsoft's image as a competent software company.

Apple is a hardware company. OSX is the engine of their work and works best with the engineered items they design. This is often a reason why people like to buy Apple - an integrated approach. If you want to fix stuff every day, there are plenty of choices available.

No one is forcing anyone to buy their stuff and if what they produce wasn't appreciated by consumers expressing their loyalty through choice, they'd go bust.