i'm amazed by the lack of common sense on these board sometimes.
Guys, NBC didn't go to Apple and say "you must start charging 4.99 for episodes, or we're leaving." Apple wasn't your resolute hero, standing firm for 1.99 episodes no matter what, looking out for the "little guy" and all of that.
Apple obviously wanted half or more of the consumer price. That's a pretty stiff hosting fee. Yes, Apple wanted the price to go down to 99 cents to match their DRM'ed song price, but they were probably asking NBC to take 40-50 cents on the dollar. Of course that stuff is all secret contract detail, but you'll notice that Apple, not NBC, announced to the public that the price would be 4.99 if NBC got as much per episode up front as they wanted. That might have been 1.50 or 1.75, which is probably what they're getting from Amazon for their 1.99 downloads. The difference between Apple and everyone else is that Apple expects to make at least 50% straight profit on everything they sell. If they don't make that mark, then they have to compensate somewhere else.
Parts on the new Nano cost less than 50 bucks? You can bet that Apple's investment money there will end up being less than 10 bucks in addition to-consumer costs by the time they ship a new Nano design. And component prices will drop over the next year or so, further increasing the bottom line. The Nano's profit margin is probably configured to compensate for iTunes music and video sales that presumably will be purchased along with the Nano with a minimal amount of profit for apple (only 10-20% depending on the source).
Don't get me wrong, Apple makes great hardware and great software...but they're much better at raking in the cash and over fist.
I have two macs at home, one at work, 2 ipods and another Mac on the way when I get my christmas bonus. I get it. But I also know that if I could easily put OS X on a self-built generic intel box, I would do that and save myself several hundred dollars in the process. Apple's OS isn't a money-making product by their standards...it's a way to make you buy a new Mac. I wouldn't have purchased a macbook if I could easily install 10.4 on an Acer laptop. I would, however, still want a mac mini for my home theater. They are overcharging for the components, but until someone makes a better machine that takes up less space, that mini is hard to ignore for home theater guys.
The macpro i have at work has a lot more value than my G5 in my eyes, not so much it's faster, but because it's got 4 hard drive bays and 2 optical bays and built-in optical audio, decent amount of room for expansion cards, and relatively-easy-to-upgrade processors. It costs too much by a couple hundred bucks, but it has overkill potential that's hard to ignore. You can stuff a lot of RAM in these puppies.