> They want to prevent
> prospective MacBook or Mac Mini customers from buying a $300 netbook
> rather than an Apple product which costs at least two or three times
> as much".
A couple years ago, I thought about assembling an XPC instead of buying a Mac-mini. I spent a couple weeks researching parts, and found I couldn't put something together that was cheaper than a Mac-mini, by about $50.
I also spent an afternoon in Zhongguancun about the same time, thinking I could get parts to build a really cheap laptop. Again, it was a little cheaper than an equivalent white 13" MacBook, but not so much that it was worth spending the money.
So in my experience, you can get desktop PCs that outperform Macintosh computers for not-much-money, but when you come to smaller devices, which are all about integration, Apple has been pretty competitive on their pricing.
So I'm skeptical of these claims that Apple charges 300-1000% markups ;-) on their merchandise.