I get that you're saying that you don't mind being price gouged but wouldn't you at least prefer to have other options available? Even if you prefer to buy only Apple products surly you realize that without those options Apple has little incentive to innovate. At one time technology seemed to be headed towards a cross compatibility utopia where everything worked together in harmony. Then one day everything just pivoted towards locked propitary systems that enrich large companies while making the end user experience worse. I truly don't understand why anyone would want anti consumer systems but here we are.
The issue is that the “utopia” you so want to believe in doesn’t exist, and as history as shown, modularity ultimately lost out to integration, contrary to what Clayton Christensen espoused.
So people have two choices. They can choose a modular system like android or windows where everything is cheaper and kinda works, or they can opt for Apple’s integrated product strategy where the user experience is better (thereby justifying Apple’s higher prices), maximises the chances of success for new Apple products (think of how Apple leveraged its control over NFC on the iPhone to get banks to support Apple Pay, something Google had limited success with initially), and well, it’s as close one comes to earning monopoly-level profits without actually being an actual monopoly in the legal sense (which, for users means that Apple continues to support their products for longer because it’s in their interests that users stay on their platform).
My whole issue with the android / windows business model is that it tends to result in a race to the bottom where the only things that matter are specs and price. There is little room for “niceness” or other intangibles that can have a positive impact on the user experience, but which can’t be quantified and measured on a spreadsheet (and therefore tend to take a back seat to qualities like more cores, even if they don’t necessarily improve the overall experience).
So while modular systems have allowed PCs and Smartphones to be affordable and more readily available, these same traits then became a problem because they also prevented them from becoming good enough in all the attributes that matter to buyers.
This is why I disagree that Apple doesn’t innovate, or that I am being gouged. Apple has succeeded precisely because they correctly identified the blind spot in the theory of low-end disruption and were able to capitalise on it.
Just so we are clear, I am aware that not all consumers value or can afford what Apple has to offer. Most don’t, in fact. However, enough do to make Apple one of the most successful companies in the world. I am one of them, and I find I am better off for it.
The problem isn’t Apple overcharging for hardware. The problem is that the utopia you so want to believe in; it’s all a lie.
