The thing is, there's a huge difference between "This company is offering a great value product" and "This company is charging way more than the product is worth, but I like it and will buy it anyway."
A $350,000 Ferrari does not cost 17 times as much to make as a $20,000 Honda, so they make much higher margins. And the price/performance from the Honda is way better. Ferrari buyers know this and they are still very happy to buy their Ferraris. In that sense, Apple is like Ferrari.
An iPhone does not give anywhere near the same price/performance as a same-generation Galaxy S-series. You do get iOS, which I actually completely agree is much better than Android (having used both quite a bit), and for a lot of people does justify buying an iPhone (and I think people who feel that way are right to buy their iPhones). But that doesn't change the fact that an iPhone gives you a lot less phone for a lot more money and for that reason gives Apple a heck of a lot more money off each phone they sell.
I totally get why you say the iPhone is worth it for you, and I really do agree with you on that point and on the Android vs iOS issue. But when you compare the Galaxy to the iPhone, the Galaxy is a much more expensive piece of hardware to put together.
Who's throwing a hissy fit? I'm saying Apple is selling a product at a huge markup giving you a poor value and them a huge profit, but clearly people are happy to pay for it. You're saying Apple is giving you good value for your money.
Which then begs the question - who gets to decide whether a product is worth it or not to each individual consumer. Who gets to decide the value of silky smooth scrolling, or larger camera pixels, or a secure enclave for the fingerprint sensor. Features that can't be distilled into a benchmark or assigned a numerical value the way you can with ram and processor speeds, but which factor into the end user experience of the product nevertheless?
I remember back when people used to laugh at the iPhone for having a dual-core processor while their android phones had quad core chips. Until anandtech showed that four cores was actually slower than two cores due to heat issues. Guess what. Apple did know better, and didn't allow what might have looked better on a spec sheet into get in the way of what was legitimately better for the end user.
As a counterpoint, I will bring up a time when I had a bad case of the hives, and the doctor who managed to solved my problem was a skin specialist who knew at a glance what my issue was and was able to prescribe the right medicine for me. Something none of the other doctors before him could do.
This skin specialist charged way more for what turned out to be ordinary, generic medication. But it worked. That's what I was paying for - his expertise in knowing which medicine to dispense, not so much the medicine itself. Sure, the other doctors charged me less, but none of them could solve my problem, so it didn't matter that I was paying less; I was still flushing good money down the toilet.
Same with Apple. I am paying for Apple's expertise in knowing how to put all those parts and software and services together in a manner which affords me the user experience I do desire, something which no other company can do. That's why I don't care how little Apple spends on their parts; that's not what matters to me.
What matters is that I get an integrated computing solution which just works right out of the box. And Apple is still the only company who can do that for me. To me, my Apple products may cost more upfront, but they pay for themselves in the form of fewer problems and improved productivity overall.
Conversely, the galaxy phone might have cost more in terms of hardware to make, but if it still doesn't give me the experience i want, I see no reason to get one. I don't care for Dex, an awkwardly placed fingerprint sensor, a face scanner which can be fooled by a photo or gimmicky features like the ability to see what's inside my fridge. I am sure there are countless people out there who probably do, but I am not one of them.
To me, what's embarrassing isn't the fact that the iPhone costs so little to make. What's embarrassing is that the competition spends so much on the parts for their smartphones, yet still can't match the iPhone in terms of performance. Even if the iPhone cost Apple just $1 to make, I would still pay a premium for it so long as it continues to offer a great user experience.
