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Sorry you didn't get my points, maybe in the future you might, I have more than 20 years of experience in the area to know what I am talking about. I am not entitled to anything other than not being screwed over by apple. Hard drive speeds circa 2003 in 2013, for a $100 price spike is screwing me over, +$450 for a small ssd to the already expensive retail price is screwing me over. It's 300-400% margins when the rest of the biz is going with 5-15% margins.
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yeah it's weird why you don't feel screwed over, cause you are, and royally so, the thing with apple is they have a knack of making you liking it and forgetting about it.
First, I didn't post my comparison pictures of the new and old iMacs. The pictures don't looks like real life, so I think they would just cause confusion. So don't look for them on the forum.
I think you're exaggerating. "hard drive speeds circa 2003 in 2013"? C'mon, it's still 2012. Can you point to a 2003 disk, at anything approaching consumer prices, that performed as well at the 21.5" iMac disks of today? (And what were its power and noise characteristics?)
The hard disk is probably a step backwards, granted. (I'll wait for benchmarks to make up my mind for sure.) All the other major parts are newer and better than before, which is the least I'd hope for. The base price increase seems mostly fair to me, because I think the new screen construction is probably a lot more expensive to make than the old one. There are other ways to assemble screens, and cheaper ways to reduce glare (while perhaps harming viewing quality in other ways). You may not agree with the way Apple did it. Eh.
300%-400% margins? Really? Seems entirely far fetched to me. If they really had such high margins, they'd cut them to 200% and take market share until the anti-trust regulators shut them down.
I think the base 21.5" iMac is Apple's version of a "loss leader". They probably made it very cheap, well below their gross margin goal for the product line. They want to offer something for the very cost-sensitive customers (most companies do this) but they DON'T want to sell the bulk of the product mix this low. They want to upsell with better features, and mostly sell systems at their "normal" gross margin. Seems pretty common in the computer business. Pretty common with other products like cars too. The cheapest versions of many products have some pretty undesirable features.
I don't feel screwed over, partly because I'm NOT extremely price sensitive. I'll buy a 27" iMac which is a better bang for my buck, because I have the bucks. If I had to buy the base 21.5", I'd be a bit disappointed by the missing features and I'd wish for more stuff for less money. I'd probably still buy it, because I don't see a better alternative
for me on the market.
But far, far more important to me is my time. Apple is offering systems which are easy to buy, configure, use, and maintain. Performance is excellent (compared to what I have today) and I'll get many years of service out of the system. I could find something for less money with more raw performance, but it would run software that I hate that wastes my time. I could piece together a somewhat better storage solution for the iMac, but the few hundred (at most) I'd save wouldn't justify the time and hassle.
Apple is very good at making usable stuff that meets my needs. They could offer lower prices, but I don't rage at them for choosing not to. All those vendors in the Windows world could offer stuff that wastes less of my time, and I don't rage at them for choosing not to, either. I choose from what the market offers. If it's a few months later or a couple hundred dollars more expensive than some ideal scenario beyond my control, it really doesn't bother me.
