On Oct 7, 2011, at 7:59 AM, Nathan S. wrote:
> Apple easily charges a 60%, and in all honesty more like 100%, retail premium, for a computer that has the same amount of hardware power as something priced at half that much from another manufacturer.
Well, no. Not if you include the aluminum case, weight, dimensions, internal integration of components in "hardware power".
That's exactly what competitors can't match. And that's what consumers have learned to appreciate, and it was about time because unlike everything else in the house or office, computers were still ugly, noisy, bulky and crashing all the time until a short while ago. If you can't accept that from your coffee machine, why would you accept that from the machine that you work/play on ? And do you need to be able to select the chipset that goes with your coffee machine ? Seriously.
A laptop, for ex, is something that falls and when it falls if it is in plastic, it breaks, if it is in aluminum, it does not. If it weights 2 kilos it falls harder than if it weights 1 kilo. And if components are not tightly integrated, they are likely to break loose. That's what a lot of pundits get wrong about Apple's lineup. Macs are robust machines and are designed to take much less space than anything competitors can match.
iOS devices are designed the same way. Who wants a tablet with a _fan_ ? That's what Windows 8 was demoed on a few weeks ago.
Ok, Chinese workers help Apple a lot, but Foxconn works for pretty much all of Apple's competitors and that does not help _them_ producing stuff that people want to buy.
Apple is a hardware company that uses services (software, music distribution etc) as a way to support hardware sales. The proof is in the pudding: I participate to the (Japan) Open-Source Conference on pretty much a monthly basis. The meetings are full of geeks and I have never seen a "Hackintosh" there, and except for the BSD team and the "do your OS yourself" guys, pretty much half the crowd runs sleek Mac hardware. 2 weeks ago in Hiroshima I saw for the first time in 5 years, guys who had Windows running on their Macs because they were developing a device for blind users. When I asked if they had a Mac version, they replied that Mac had it all already with Voice Over.
Right now, Apple machines are so way ahead of the competition it is not even funny. I hope that lasts because thanks to Apple, Intel is at last interested in low consumption chips and is willing to invest millions of dollars in designs that copy the MacBook Air. For the competition (who's mostly not fanboys...), the current Mac Book Air is the future, not Hackintosh machines.
JC