So it starts like this:
Have fun overpaying for your products! I’m glad you like getting reamed and boasting about it.
::shrug:: defend it however you want. The fact is, they are selling less numbers of the same hardware, but making more money. If you can’t see that means they are charging more than their competition for the same hardware, I don’t know what to tell you.
I don’t think Apple is selling the same hardware as most other PC companies. For instance, Apple is selling a lot of all-in-one desktop computers, which isn’t big in the PC-world at all. Also, Apple is selling laptops with very long battery life, without sacrificing on the looks, weight and performance too much. That’s the sort of stuff people will pay premium for. That’s why Apple is making more money than the rest.
Just look at the revenues and profits of the companies listed on Wikipedia:
Apple Inc
HP
Dell
Lenovo
Toshiba
ASUS
Acer
As you can see, every single company is making less money than Apple, except for HP. And I’ll bet you that when you look up HP’s annual financial reports, it will show they’re not making that money in the PC-market.
McDonalds didn’t become #1 by making the best hamburger. McDonalds became #1 through marketing.
Wrong. McDonalds became #1 by pushing cheap assed burgers well below the price of a decent burger.
When push comes to shove a much higher percentage of people are willing to get something that works, even if barely so, at a significant cost savings. Same reason why Wal-mart is the #1 retailer. I haven’t seen a Wal-mart commercial in YEARS. Sometimes I doubt that they even have a real marketing department. They’re #1 though, because while they sell junk, it’s CHEAP junk.
The same applies to PC’s. HP sells a metric ton of systems because their systems are cheap. Same with the other top few manufacturers. Together, they collectively stomp Apple pretty good.
Apple itself couldn’t even survive without their draconian tying of hardware to their OS. When clones were licensed and they came with cheaper hardware even Apple’s customers FLOCKED to the clone makers, nearly bankrupting Apple, because what most of them wanted was MacOS. Most couldn’t care less what hardware the OS ran on. This is the reason why Jobs immediately terminated the clone licenses upon his return to the company.
Apple has basically just managed to create an OS that is so good that they can con you into paying 3x as much for a plain old computer with a “Can run MacOS!” flag set (and they’ve also convinced users to rejoice in the fact that they’re overpaying for this hardware). Sure, you can claim that “They’re a hardware company.”, but that’s misleading. Let them drop MacOS (software) and sell their shiny machines with Windows and see just how fast that company tanks. They’re a hardware company as much as a strip club is an alcohol vendor – it might be what they make money off of but people aren’t paying $5 for a bottle of Bud Light because they just like the way you pour it.
When you buy a computer from Apple, you are buying a computer that it has been tested and will run any iteration of Apple’s Operation System (OSX) that it is made for. Although this is quite different for Power PC (because its an older generation with a different architecture), any machine running an Intel CPU will be able to run any OSX for Intel CPU’s. You are buying a computer that works out of the box for more years than the average computer lifespan of productivity.
And besides, if it’s the software that people like so much, why not just build a Hackintosh?
If a Hackintosh provided the same experience, yes, it would work. However, you might note that a Hackintosh does not provide the same experience, because first you have to hack it together to work (hence the name) and then you have to do without support from Apple.
In other words, the same reasons the year of the Linux desktop has never arrived.
