My line I always say is apple could poop into a brown paper bag, slap the apple logo on it and people would line up and pay $600+ for it because its "apple".
The big question really is how does Apple justify charging their high prices when their products are so pathetic.
My Sony XperiaZ Ultra retails for about the same as an iPhone but it is packed with high-end features. It's waterproof to 3 feet for 30 minutes. It can be charged inductively. It accepts micro-SDXC cards (128GB for now, up to 2TB later) in addition to the onboard storage, and comes with drive-mounting software pre-installed, making it easy to attach HDDs, SSDs, or multicard readers through USB. Its 7" display is 1080p. Of course it has the usual quad-core CPU and 2GB of RAM.
Just a few days ago I wanted to give a friend a copy of "The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin" but we couldn't find an easy way to copy the MP4 file from my Xperia to his iPhone. It seems his iPhone would accept neither a USB nor an Apple "Lightning" cable. I suggested copying it onto his SD card with a cardreader from my PC. Oops, no SD slot in the iPhone.
It seems that much of the iPhone snobbery is akin to overpaying for a small portion of mediocre food in a trendy restaurant. It's all about conspicuous consumption. Look at me. I can afford to pay $600 for something that's not worth $100.
_____
Meanwhile back on topic, there's very little price movement tonight so far, so I think I'll go out and have a few cold ones. Not because I want to be seen paying 3 times as much as at the store, but because it comes with extra features like live music and pretty women.
