Gruber just posted a relevant article concerning Apple pricing.
His basic point is that PC’s are cheaper because PC competitors don’t try to match the design/build quality of a Mac, whereas in the phone or tablet market, they have to, and when they do, they actually can’t compete due to Apple’s economies of scale.
He’s mostly right, but I’d look at the PC thing slightly differently.
Out of all the devices that Apple makes, the PC is one where the physical design of the product is least tied to Apple’s design. As far as a user’s concerned, every PC or Mac is a monitor, keyboard and mouse. Yes, you can buy a nicer looking mac pro box, or a mini, but those don’t really affect the quality of the core experience. In this world, the Dells and HPs of the world don’t really need to match Apple in design, because people who care will just buy the nicer monitor or keyboard or mouse along with their cheap PC. There’s a functional open market there, and lots of competition, and I think that’s why you’ll see a lot of people actually not even like Apple’s peripherals here.
As you go into more integrated devices (laptops, tables, iphones), the physical design of product starts to matter much more. These products aren’t something that you hide under your desk, and interact with through other peripherals. The interface is the product, and it’s all built in. In these situations, it makes sense that Apple has an advantage. It’s really important that a laptop or a phone has a good design. As for a PC? if I have the peripherals that I want, who cares?
It also makes sense that Apple’s main desktop is an integrated iMac. If it wasn’t integrated, what’s the point? They’d be in the same race to the bottom as all the other PC manufacturers.
The pricing argument already works for laptops. If you want a laptop that’s actually as nice as a Macbook, there are few choices. Sony is about the only one that comes to mind, and if you go with a Vaio, you’re basically going to pay just as much.
My analysis from yesterday basically coincides with all this. As far as standard componentized desktops are concerned, there’s very little that Apple brings to the table.
The larger question is, even for the desktop, does the world actually prefer integrated devices? The success of the iMac seems to imply that the answer is yes, at least for a pretty big part of the market. But it’s hard to believe that the rest of the market (especially enterprise) feels the same way.