On Jul 11, 2013, at 5:37 AM, Wojtek S <wsoko52 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Not so with Apple - you have to buy everything from their company store at
> inflated prices: hardware, software, parts, peripherals They even want to
> monopolize the shape of their devices
You don't have to buy anything at their company stores. There are plenty of non apple stores that sell Apple products along with HP/Lenovo stuff etc. We don't have a single Apple store where I live in Japan but I can count at least a dozen computer shops that also offer Apple products (hardware and software). And you can buy your stuff online from Amazon (or other places) too.
You can use any kind of non Apple parts or peripherals on your machine and you can even service your machine yourself to add non Apple memory or non Apple HDs etc.
As for the "App Store", prices are set by developers, not by Apple, and you can get most of the software outside from the App Store, including all the free and open source one.
Prices are inflated if you consider that a MacBook Air like machine in plastic is equivalent to the MBA in aluminum etc.
And about the "shape" of things, you'd be surprised to see the number of MacBook Air clones that have not been subject to a challenge in court. In fact, non of them have.
JC