General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Why does Apple keep gouging it's customers? [View all]isn't a hardware company (other than xbox and a few small areas).
Intel is not comparable to either -- its a manufacturer first and a software company second -- but it has no consumer business of any size.
Dell's margin is 21%, and HP's is 24% -- and both of those have much higher margin businesses than Apple (enterprise consulting, servers, and networking) in addition to consumer goods.
That being said, I do think *most* of Apples stuff is fairly reasonably priced given:
1) The fact that they offer form factors not available anywhere else, and often with better specs than "comparable" items.
2) Many people prefer the apple ecosystem and software.
3) On an apples to apples comparison, their hardware tends to be the same price as equivalent hardware from dell, et al (if its even available).
Apple IMHO tends to be price competitive at the midrange and upper-middle range. They offer no lower end hardware at all, and their workstation offerings are a bit nuts.... They also offer no servers which is disappointing given some of the software in their toolkit.