First of all, I priced this at work out of curiosity when buying some Mac Pros and some Macbook Pros. You can get a PC with the same hardware specs as a Mac Pro for about half the cost. You can also get a PC with the same specs for about the same cost if you get one of the gamer brands, but just a Dell or HP Quad core machine is far cheaper than a Mac Pro, assuming all things that can be compared on an apples to apples basis are the same.
In notebooks the price disparity is not quite as large, but it's still large. You'll get about the same notebook for $800 that you'd get for $1,200 from Apple. Also, stuff like RAM upgrades and SSDs cost far more for the same thing. Again though, you could find comparable Windows units for about the same prices, or at least close, if you went with higher end notebook brands.
Second, in phones the price disparity is still large because of Apple's deal with AT&T. They're getting not only the $600 unsubsidized prices, but some extra fee as well taken from the contract. You might argue that AT&T is paying that, not you, but your bill may be higher as a result, or you may be on AT&T rather than Verizon since VZW wouldn't agree to that, etc.
Even in tablets, competitors definitely can match the iPad's prices. The Nook is $250. I of more tablets costed below the iPad than above.
Mac Pros have Xeon CPUs and ECC RAM. Were you comparing with similar "workstation" grade PCs?
(Whether the average Mac Pro user gets any real benefit from these parts is another question)
Consider that now is the time when manufacturers are putting memory test utilities into firmware and that intersects with systems coming with 4-8-12GB of memory that take can take multiple hours to fully test. I would say its worth it.
If the Mac detects a bad DIMM it locks it out and informs you which one. You don't have to have do the RAM shuffle to find out which one is the bad DIMM. Your computer also doesn't crash because of it (it shouldn't but I've seen instances where even ECC couldn't recover).
Not doing this again now, but in my experience over the past few years the "Apple tax" on notebooks based on specs alone was about $100 - $200.
Apple doesn't sell cheap laptops but when you compare a $800 machine to a $1200 Mac, I dare say that many of the components in the $800 PC will be inferior, CPU, screen, etc. Not even mentioning the chassis where nobody can touch the unibody design of the Macs.
Apple makes premium stuff that comes with premium components - high end PCs which also come with premium components usually cost just as much, or just a tad less.
For the Mac Pro, it's probably a similar situation - you can probably make a cheap junk PC with the same CPU and as much HD space for much less, but if you use high quality components you'll be right up there fairly quickly.
As for tablets - Gruber's argumentation is way more conclusive, sorry.
Dell is still way more expensive than buying the parts and assembling yourself, about 2x more expensive where I live.
Did you just compare the Nook to the iPad? How is that at all comparable to the feature set of the iPad? Go on.
You're also somehow assuming that other phones are not subsidized??? This has been going on before the iPhone existed so don't be surprised if the Android is too. So no, what AT&T pays doesn't count.
One of the main things I've never heard enough about in comparing Macs and PCs is the service. The ease of service with defects and breakage with Apple is world class. That's surely something that Apple factors into the price and Apple thinks it's worth it. Software etc as well. So I don't know why Gruber thinks he can really compare those things.
From a hardware standpoint the Nook isn't that far off of the iPad. Any differences in feature set are largely due to them running some custom version of Android which probably cost a lot more than running stock. Just slapping Froyo on it would have made the feature set as comparable as you could get.
So in terms of pricing (and probably only pricing) it's a fair comparison. It illustrates that vendors could compete with Apple on pricing if they wanted. I think they're quite wise not to, everyone saw the race to the bottom on PC margins that happened in the late 90s and decided they'd opt out this time around.
You're right about the phones, others are subsidized, though usually with an upfront fee rather than an ongoing. The rumors in the early days were that Apple's monthly fee is much more than most other phones get, and that's why AT&T got them over Verizon, but who knows.
Many PC vendors have service at least as good as Apple's. I've dealt with both HP and Apple, they're pretty comparable. And with HP you never have to hear the term "genius bar".
What? The new nook has a 16-color e-ink screen. They don't even ship a frackin' web browser because they admit the experience is clunky.
Actually the new Nook is not an e-ink display, it's a 1024x600 LCD, and it does come with a web browser.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2371521,00.asp http://www.engadget.com/2010/10/26/nook-color-first-hands-on...
But other than both halves of his argument being incorrect, I can see why parent's comments get upvoted and mine down.
It is rather sad that your legitimate and well thought out comment gets downvoted to oblivion, apparently because it expresses an unpopularly (on HN) non-Apple worshiping viewpoint.
Meanwhile mikeklaas short, completely and wildly factually incorrect comment gets plenty of upvotes, apparently because it supports the HN popular view that anyone daring to compete with Apple must be incompetent?
Apparently, at least where Apple is concerned, HN has it's own version of group-think now?
Do any PC vendors have anything even remotely comparable to the in-person support available at an Apple Store? Being able to take a device to the store and physically hand it off to be fixed without having to wait on the phone or deal with shipping is a huge plus in Apple's favor.