You completely missed the part where I said I would rather they left out retina if it means a lower cost, didn't you? For what it is, I think the air is too expensive an would love to see Apple turn it into a cheaper entry level product for the every day user, you know those who aren't pro users.
I'd still say charge a premium for the Apple logo, after all, Apple products are premium, but charging less than what they are charging now would go a long way in seeing a larger market share in my uneducated opinion.
While true, Apple's goals may not be to increase marketshare but rather increase profits. They sound like they would go hand in hand, but this isn't true.
For example, if Apple sells Macbook Airs for $1,000 while they cost $500 to produce, if they sell 1,000,000 of them, they make $500,000,000 profit.
However, let's say they drop the price to $800 to make them "more affordable" and sold 30% more as a result. Now they sell 1,300,000 for a profit of $390,000,000 -- that's $110,000,000 LESS profit than at full price.
Now this is purely a hypothetical example, but I am just trying to show you that market share (aka increasing the number of units sold) isn't always the same as making more profits -- and making it up on volume isn't always possible.
Plus, let's say that the new added sales still generated the same profit. Why would Apple want to bust their balls twice or thrice as hard for the same payout at the end of the day?
I don't know about you, but if someone gave me the choice to earn $100 by working either 8 or 16 or 24 hours, I'd pick 8 (and companies would too). As a general rule, most people (and companies) want to do the least amount of work for the highest possible pay off.
As far as lowering the cost and passing those savings onto the customer, the cost difference of individual components is fairly trivial. I bet Apple's cost on a retina MacBook Air display would be maybe $20 or $30 over the cost of a regular display (and thats probably a high estimate).
Personally, I'd rather pay $999 for a retina display Macbook Air than $979 for a standard display one. I am sure most reasonable people would too. When purchasing a $1,000 product, I doubt a difference that small could be a deal breaker. If a $20-$50 price difference is enough to sway you one way or the other on affordability grounds, maybe you should examine if you can afford to be buying any product in this price range at all.
Plus, adding a retina display might be what puts some people who bought in the last couple of years to finally upgrade. So by going with a slightly lower price for a regular display one, they might pick up some small margin of sales but those gains would be offset by people who may have upgraded to a retina waiting longer to upgrade.
There's lots of things to consider in making business decisions like these.
), but I wasn't exactly going "Oh no, I can't afford a MacBook Pro. Lets buy a MacBook Air instead." I already had a MacBook Pro; I bought the MacBook Air for its lightness & battery life. That was its USP.
