Apple doesn't cultivate a community of price-sensitive buyers. Apple is a "value-added" company, not a "basic service" mass-market provider. If you are pricing things based on their "true cost" then there is no margin for Apple at all. Apple makes money by selling you something in its ecosystem for a significant markup. They can easily charge you basic fees for an 8gb RAM, then ask you to sign a 6-year software maintenance subscription contract and a one-time hardware design consulting fee, just like how most contracts are handled between business to business purchases. In the Pro world, a handle for your DSLR can cost over 650 dollars, and that is just a piece of cast Aluminum with no electronics in it at all. A piece of polarising glass filter can cost over 350 dollars, and that is just a piece of tempered glass with come polarising UV coating fixed onto some aluminum chassis. The Apple Pro Display XDR stand can cost more than 999 dollars before tax... You see, it's not how much they charge for the RAM that matters, it's how much they need you to pay on average as a customer using their service because investors really only cares about ASP, or average selling price of a product or service.
