On the Apple tax:
A 8 months into Covid, I called HP service, querying whether their 32" highish end monitor would run two notebooks at the same time, half screen (for my wife working at home, one was a temp work notebook, both HPs, each with a single T3 / USB-C displayport cabability which would also charge the T-3 connected notebook). HP service confirmed it would work, I bought the monitor. My wife's HP is an Elitebook and was still under warranty and also even on-site support (not valid though with Covid). The monitor would not do as promised. It took me around 28 hours of test software test software downloads uploads and 8 hours on the phone over six days. 9th day I requested the monitor be returned. Then later, I had to seek legal redress in order to get HP to repay the money - because they would not answer, would not arrange to refund the money, it was always in someone else's area, responsibility, etc etc etc I spent a couple of hours and 8 phone calls and innumerable texts and emails trying to get the money refunded 6 weeks after the monitor went back.
I bought a 15% more expensive Dell 32" and it worked fine.
I should have paid the Dell tax I guess (the extra 15%) but the issue is: how does one know? With Apple, my experience would have been a lot better.
Further on the tax: My wife got a 14" DEC notebook in about 1993 - it cost $14,000. It was very compact though. She hardly used it. OK she's a crap typer. and had a secretary. But her IT guys loved it.
I paid in 1991 about $20,000 for a 80486 to do a job for a merchant bank. I still can't belief I paid all that for what quickly became a piece of junk.
Don't talk to me about the PC tax thanks. I have a games machine in my home office, it doesn't work, its built by my son, but its crap. Its got faults all over it. Plus the cooling has never worked, so the noisy fans are full speed, it sounds like there's a motor bike in the room.
And you know, if Intel had given Apple powerful integrated CPU/GPUs, who knows whether Apple would have ever jumped - they may have hung and hung on. Like they had being doing for years ... with Intel not giving Apple would they were pleading for.
Now Apple have got what they wanted. And for some of us, it's better for us that way.