Justified?

[noxibox]

Really? I take it you're not married or engaged, then. Try giving a woman a fake diamond engagement ring and let us know how that works for you.

I'm talking about the reality of how many diamonds can be produced, stockpiling to manipulate prices. That women have been suckered into this stupidity of demanding and expecting diamond rings is unquestionable. And that most men just kowtow to this is plain silly, but then it's their money so they can burn it any way they want. Personally I'm quite prepared to have that fight.

A little reading of the history of the diamond business will go a long way though. And people get all worked up when China decides to control quantities of resources, or even OPEC, but they've been happily letting the diamond business do it for decades. It probably helps of course that diamonds were once exceedingly rare, and that this image has been carefully maintained through extensive advertising.

But please feel free to let me relieve you of any of those "common" diamonds that are cluttering up your backyard. I mean really, you can't move without stumbling over another damn piece of diamond boulder.

Well I'm sure that any moment now you'll be quoting where I said the ground everywhere is covered with them.

And contrary to what you seem to think, there is no natural price, any more than which is overpriced.

Those who believe in the free market would naturally disagree with you. In the case of manufactured goods of course you inherently create an artificial shortage. With mobile phones though I'd expect that only the minority actually buy them rather than getting them as part of a contract, so they're never faced with the outright cost of whatever phone they select.

All that matters is whether we are prepared to pay the asking price.

Exactly the point being made by the people who are calling the iPhone, or anything else, overpriced. It doesn't preclude considering something excessively expensive for any number of reasons.

 

[noxibox]

Nonsense - you're required to declare all goods and pay VAT/Duties on anything and everything exceeding the allowances.

Supposed to or not, it's the luck of the draw. I'm certainly not going to contact customs each time I receive a parcel they overlooked.

 

[noxibox]

- The trackpad is unmatched. I still can't work out why a pc vendors put such crap in their machines. Controlling your cursor on a laptop is vital to the experience.

I've had some Windows laptops with pretty nice pads, but nothing comes close to the one on current Macbooks, both the size and features.

Another area I've noticed the Macbooks are very good is the speakers and microphones. Just works for making voice calls.

 

[MattyW]

That's a matter of opinion -- sorry but I don't agree.

Many believe Android requires more RAM and CPU to provide a similar experience, the bigger battery could in turn be a consequence of more hungry components, and consider that not everyone likes such a huge phone...

I am sorry I disagree with you it's not a matter of opinion it's a matter of fact, It is not relevant that the android phone needs more RAM or a better CPU or a bigger battery or whatever, the fact is it has them and they cost more to produce than the iphone equivalent thus following logic the android phone costs more to produce and yet sells for cheaper. One day when we get projectors or holographic displays in our android phones I will be looking forward to an iphone user explaining why his phone should still cost more. I am happy you are happy with your purchase and as pointed out sooo many times if you are prepared to pay the premium for apple products that's great and good for you but trying to deny the premium is their is ridiculous at this point, also absolutely expensive is a "subjective" concept but never the less apple products especially iphone's have a premium price tag on them considering the cost of manufacture, at any rate we are all happy I can hardly see why we are arguing about this.

 

[undesign]

To varying degrees looks, quality and performance matters to us. To varying degrees those all come at a price. If if wasn't important we would all live in the same dreary houses, driving Nissans...and using HP.

 

[Fudzy]

I am sorry I disagree with you it's not a matter of opinion it's a matter of fact, It is not relevant that the android phone needs more RAM or a better CPU or a bigger battery or whatever, the fact is it has them and they cost more to produce than the iphone equivalent thus following logic the android phone costs more to produce and yet sells for cheaper. One day when we get projectors or holographic displays in our android phones I will be looking forward to an iphone user explaining why his phone should still cost more. I am happy you are happy with your purchase and as pointed out sooo many times if you are prepared to pay the premium for apple products that's great and good for you but trying to deny the premium is their is ridiculous at this point, also absolutely expensive is a "subjective" concept but never the less apple products especially iphone's have a premium price tag on them considering the cost of manufacture, at any rate we are all happy I can hardly see why we are arguing about this.

Why should Apple sell the iPhone for any less? There are scores of non-tech savvy people who have familiarised themselves with iTunes, are used to iOS and are quite happy to pay the premium.

On the Android side it's pretty dog eat dog with a number of manufacturer's trying to get a piece of the pie.

 

[MattyW]

Why should Apple sell the iPhone for any less? There are scores of non-tech savvy people who have familiarised themselves with iTunes, are used to iOS and are quite happy to pay the premium.

On the Android side it's pretty dog eat dog with a number of manufacturer's trying to get a piece of the pie.

But that's exactly my point apple can charge a premium and people will still pay it BUT the apple fans who try and make the premium vanish by saying RAM, bigger battery exct. don't matter are deluding themselves, the fact is the iphone comes at a premium, do I blame apple for charging it? No, because fans are willing to pay it, that's just good business but some people will try and make it seem like the premium doesn't exist when a little checking would make it glaringly obvious.

Good point about the android side apple has set up the perfect model in a sense since their is no competition directly for the iphone at least not in the same sense with android, if samsung demanded 10k for the galaxy s2 then I would simply go to motorola or sony or HTC you can't do the same with the iphone, at any rate well done to apple.

 

[icyrus]

I am sorry I disagree with you it's not a matter of opinion it's a matter of fact, It is not relevant that the android phone needs more RAM or a better CPU or a bigger battery or whatever, the fact is it has them and they cost more to produce than the iphone equivalent thus following logic the android phone costs more to produce and yet sells for cheaper.

Your argument is totally undermined by the fact that you exclude everything that doesn't help your cost comparison.

- Did you include Apple's retail presence (as their primary point of sale) vs the fact that Android phones are generally sold through carriers and general electronics stores?
- Did you include the cost of developing iOS vs that of Android?
- Did you include the cost of Apple's continued support for their devices vs the general abandonment of the Android suppliers of their older models?
- Did you include the supporting infrastructure costs of iCloud and the iTunes store?

I am happy you are happy with your purchase and as pointed out sooo many times if you are prepared to pay the premium for apple products that's great and good for you but trying to deny the premium is their is ridiculous at this point

What's ridiculous are people who think that their opinions are fact.

 

[MattyW]

Your argument is totally undermined by the fact that you exclude everything that doesn't help your cost comparison.

- Did you include Apple's retail presence (as their primary point of sale) vs the fact that Android phones are generally sold through carriers and general electronics stores?
- Did you include the cost of developing iOS vs that of Android?
- Did you include the cost of Apple's continued support for their devices vs the general abandonment of the Android suppliers of their older models?
- Did you include the supporting infrastructure costs of iCloud and the iTunes store?

Good points all of them...

- Did you include Apple's retail presence (as their primary point of sale) vs the fact that Android phones are generally sold through carriers and general electronics stores?

But this a comparison of online shop prices if apple truly spends so much on retailing the phone then the fact people who buy their phones online are being used to subsidize the other users this seems unlikely to me, at any rate a very solid point however it should also be noted that samsung also maintains service centers in almost every country with a lot of countries having more than one, according to wiki apple has about 358 retail stores worldwide, I imagine {but admit to being unable to find exact numbers} that samsung has almost the same amount of service centers, as that is one of the functions of the apple stores, to replace or fix broken phones I thought it was noteworthy.

Did you include the cost of developing iOS vs that of Android?

Well I won't include the $12.5 billion google payed for motorola as admitted by them to defend the android platform, or the initial cost of the company who were developing android and I will assume phone makers get android for free however don't forget almost all android manufactures are paying license fees to microsoft estimated to be between $5~$15 dollars per handset since HTC shipped over 30 million handsets last year at $5 dollars per handset that comes to $150 million which even with just HTC's cost I doubt comes close to the cost of developing IOS.

But ultimately thus seems like quite a weak point since apple don't release the figures for all you know it cost them 0.99c to make IOS {of course exaggeration to the extreme never the less the fact is you and I have no idea how much IOS cost}.

- Did you include the cost of Apple's continued support for their devices vs the general abandonment of the Android suppliers of their older models?

Apple support 3 phones at a time how is that expensive or difficult to do?? Samsung has over 23 different models of android phones at present apple has only ever released 5 different phones surely then by your own logic the R&D costs for samsung should be far far greater and also samsung is currently supporting 2 models which will all get ICS and a bunch of tablets opposed to apple's 2 tablets and 3 phones so that almost completely cancels out the apple 3 phone support system.

Did you include the supporting infrastructure costs of iCloud and the iTunes store?

Itunes pay for itself at least according to apple, that's why they charge 30% of all revenue generated on it and it's service used to attract customers samsung also has a app store which is cheaper than the market for certain things, logic follows they are losing money on that aswel yet it draws customers certain services are in place to attract more customers, and as to iCloud that service only became readily available recently yet iphones have always been way overpriced. I refer you to the following link http://www.brighthand.com/default.asp?newsID=16775&news=Apple+iPhone+4+iOS+Compuntents+Parts+Cost published way before the iphone 4s or iCloud were announced

What's ridiculous are people who think that their opinions are fact.

Agreed and sure I may have been a bit over zealous but you are doing almost the same thing... :erm:

Anyway I am done with this the fact is apple went from an obscure company on the verge of bankruptcy to one of the largest companies in the world with {compared to other major tech compamies like samsung} very little in the way of products, at one point apple had more money than the US goverment http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-07-28/tech/30049957_1_cash-balance-apple-debt-ceiling {extenuating circumstances sure but never the less} now by all means delude yourself into thinking apple magically got all that money from the fairies but at the end of the day they got it from consumers like you and me, and they got all of it by charging a premium for their devices.

Anyway it was fun debating but this had become a little more than pointless, all the best

 

[[)roi(]]

I am sorry I disagree with you it's not a matter of opinion it's a matter of fact, It is not relevant that the android phone needs more RAM or a better CPU or a bigger battery or whatever, the fact is it has them and they cost more to produce than the iphone equivalent thus following logic the android phone costs more to produce and yet sells for cheaper. One day when we get projectors or holographic displays in our android phones I will be looking forward to an iphone user explaining why his phone should still cost more. I am happy you are happy with your purchase and as pointed out sooo many times if you are prepared to pay the premium for apple products that's great and good for you but trying to deny the premium is their is ridiculous at this point, also absolutely expensive is a "subjective" concept but never the less apple products especially iphone's have a premium price tag on them considering the cost of manufacture, at any rate we are all happy I can hardly see why we are arguing about this.

Your argument has become baseless:
1.) you argue that Apple is hanging onto a higher margin, which in your opinion makes them less affordable.
2.) you argue that by including more costly components in the Android devices, automatically means you are getting the better deal / experience.
3.) you argue that Apple's costs are lower as they only have 3 products vs. the 23 of Samsung --> "spray and pray marketing" I.e. try everything and hope that something will finally stick -- btw exactly the opposite to Apple.
4.) you apparently believe there was/is some type of mass hysteria; and everyone was brainwashed into buying Apple stuff at "premium prices".

Surely you can't be that silly.

 

[MattyW]

Your argument has become baseless:

I didn't want to get dragged into this whole debacle again but after reading your post I feel compelled to reply...

1.) you argue that Apple is hanging onto a higher margin, which in your opinion makes them less affordable.

I do and seeing as how I have backed this up with many cost breakdowns exct. of apple products and their massive profit margins in the last years I fail to see how you could disagree with me, if you do please offer some comparative proof which shows the margins arn't high otherwise I would argue your arguments have become baseless.

2.) you argue that by including more costly components in the Android devices, automatically means you are getting the better deal / experience.

I don't remember mentioning experience anywhere but certainly the better deal seeing as apple gets a large part of their internal components from samsung, you can hardly make the assumption that they are superior or in any way better. Since they are essentially the same components and the one device has more, obviously it is a better deal, again I am not really seeing how you can argue that point, and again just to make sure that it's not brought up again I am talking about technical specifications not experience.

3.) you argue that Apple's costs are lower as they only have 3 products vs. the 23 of Samsung --> "spray and pray marketing" I.e. try everything and hope that something will finally stick -- btw exactly the opposite to Apple.

If you had read the full exchange earlier you may have noticed the context...

Did you include the cost of Apple's continued support for their devices vs the general abandonment of the Android suppliers of their older models?

As is made clear by reading the post above my reply to the above was that samsung must have a much higher R&D cost considering the massive amount of devices they release also as noted afterwards samsung is supporting more devices than apple for the new ICS update, again pretty confused how you could confuse this, all I was saying is it's weak to try and say apple supports their devices longer that's why it pushes their costs up which was the argument put forward by icyrus when samsung has other sections which would arguably put costs higher or at least at the same level {such as multiple concurrent R&D streams for multiple OS's (bada, android, win mobile) on multiple devices they support}.

4.) you apparently believe there was/is some type of mass hysteria; and everyone was brainwashed into buying Apple stuff at "premium prices".

Again I don't remember ever saying or even suggesting this, I have many times pointed out the quality of apple products all I have an issue with is the ridiculous denialists who try and make it seem like the premium price on apple products doesn't exist which seems to be the majority of this thread.

Surely you can't be that silly.

Could easily make the same argument except I would say ""Surely you can't be that blind?"" All this information is freely available on the net, a lot of people who use apple will openly admit they pay a premium for apple devices but don't mind because they like the product, they certainly don't try and deny the premium exists or try and justify it except by saying that for them the added price is worth it.

At any rate I am sick of arguing I have shown the math, the arguments, the articles and the websites to back up my claims, I have yet to see anything to the contrary like an article showing the iphone is in fact more expensive to manufacture or apple hasn't grown from a insignificant small american tech company to the one of the worlds largest multi-national corporations largely on the back of iphones {1}, ipads {2} and ipods {3}.

At any rate clearly their is no changing anyone's opinions, I have had enough argument about something which in my and arguably many other people's opinion is fact, "apple charge a premium for their devices" wether that premium is justified was never argued in this thread only that apparently a lot of people deny the premium exists, I am clearly not changing any minds here and I can assure you, you are not changing mine either so I will leave it at that.

Have fun paying your premiums {which don't exist} LOL

 

[ra_one]

Somebody close this ****ing thread....:twisted:

 

[[)roi(]]

ld easily make the same argument except I would say ""Surely you can't be that blind?""...

Apparently you can be that silly...

 

[undesign]

At any rate clearly their is no changing anyone's opinions, I have had enough argument about something which in my and arguably many other people's opinion is fact, "apple charge a premium for their devices" wether that premium is justified was never argued in this thread only that apparently a lot of people deny the premium exists, I am clearly not changing any minds here and I can assure you, you are not changing mine either so I will leave it at that.

Oi...the anti-Apple brigade...constantly making stuff up about Apple users, completely out of proportion to reality. I'm sure there's an apt psychological syndrome that explains this phenomenon properly.

 

[[)roi(]]

Oi...the anti-Apple brigade...constantly making stuff up about Apple users, completely out of proportion to reality. I'm sure there's an apt psychological syndrome that explains this phenomenon properly.

It's called envy -- jokes

 

[Dolby]

Oi...the anti-Apple brigade...constantly making stuff up about Apple users, completely out of proportion to reality. I'm sure there's an apt psychological syndrome that explains this phenomenon properly.

I see you googled it?

 

[[)roi(]]

I see you googled it?

I also tried... and even with that the best I could do was...

 

[sand_man]

Have fun paying your premiums {which don't exist} LOL

You need to consider the resale value when considering the premium purchase price...

 

[MattyW]

You need to consider the resale value when considering the premium purchase price...

Absolutely and premium build quality, good service, continued updates and a assortment of standardized docks and accessories that fit the iphone's generic form factor. I am not in any way trying to deny the quality, longevity or value of apple products, I only have a problem with the people who deny they are slightly more pricey than their equivalents, their is a premium on apple products whether that is justified wasn't what I was arguing in this thread only that it exists.

 

[phiber]

However all the things you list cost money to put in a phone , you can't say apple is overpriced just because they are trying to save battery.



Link: http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/Pages/iPhone-4S-Carries-BOM-of-$188,-IHS-iSuppli-Teardown-Analysis-Reveals.aspx

So for 50 dollars cheaper you get a SG2 which has another another slot of DIMM RAM {which costs more}, a faster processor {which possibly doesn't cost more or does, I wouldn't know}, a bigger battery which costs more, faster connection speeds {which probably cost more for the chip}, not sure if that one you linked to has NFC but some of the american ones do {which cost more}, might not be true but apparently the screen costs between 30-60% more to manufacture { http://www.oled-info.com/tags/market-reports/isupply }, Samsung also pays microsoft license fees for every estimated between $5-$15 dollars. All this for $50 dollars cheaper and not from samsung mind you but from amazon unlike the iphone which is directly from apple

Also apple has a far far easier time using economies of scale to their advantage and I do believe that is how the world operates, apple only produce a few phones at a time and thus can buy massive amounts of materials in bulk for cheaper. It costs apple about $200 dollars to produce that phone they sell for $599 and that is pure profit for them the scale gets even worse on the more expensive models, it costs about $250 to produce the 64Gb model which they sell for about $800

This should illustrate what I mean aswel.


Link: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...---rakes-impressive-52-industrys-profits.html

If the bolded statement alone doesn't tell you apple is ripping you off for the price of the phone I don't know what to say, samsung sells more phones than apple yet ends up with a {massively} smaller slice of the profit pie you could call that good business and from an investors standpoint it is but from a consumer stand point it is a rip off.

You missed one very big thing here, that Samsung has a free operating system, apple has their own propriety OS, which costs a sh*t load of money to develop, so they might have a reason to charge that premium...

Just changed to the S2 from my iPhone4 and even though the phone is great, it still lacks from a userbility and interface point of view... Wil definitely wait till ICS arrives but it will need to be special to eclipse iOS5.

Oh and I use both phones in the same manner, had to switch off locations on the android and now drop on a custom rom just to get the battery to make it through the day, so yea theres a bigger processor and maybe another DIMM slot that i'm never going to ever see, but the overall experience from Apple trumps the Samsung currently.

I would pay extra for that, even though the price difference is quite minimal.


On the Mac V PC, people can jump around and say what they like, both have their place, personally what swung me to Mac is the OS. You get the power of BSD but a proper UI as well. The OS is a pleasure to work on, the displays that they come with are just great (no need to go find a special screen, with so many acronyms you head hurts... it just comes with one that is awesome). For that, I will personally pay the premium (whatever it is) - And consumers will as well. This is what the consumers have realized and this is why Apple's market share is dominating.

Buying a computer used to be a tedious, painful task for consumers (and it still is if you're looking at a laptop with a gazillion configurations), Apple have stripped out all that pain, and again if that comes at a premium, so be it... There are a lot of people willing to pay that premium.

So to answer the OP's question, yes.... Justified.