Compare to any mac, not just the air. Compare the $1200 macbook pro to other laptops of exact or higher specs to see the prices. My point still stands, they're very, very expensive for the hardware you get. But, to be fair, ALL ultrabooks are too expensive for what you get at the moment, but give that a year or so and we'll be right back to the same thing; Mac with the most expensive gear for the same specs.

*edit* This doesn't apply to tablets though, and may not apply to computers in the future if app markets everyone seems to be migrating towards really take off. They're selling they're new iPad at a massive loss in the hopes that the app store brings in the profit. Which it most definitely will.

*another edit* And weren't you saying that $100 for an extra 16GB of storage is too much in another thread? How does it add up that you say that in one thread then say it's ok to charge an arm and a leg for minus 2 pounds (plus a lot of other goodies) for a thin laptop?

There is more to specs than just memory, CPU, and hard drive though. There are certainly a slew of Core i5, 4GB, laptops with 500GB hard drives that are probably half the price of a Macbook Pro. But they cut the corners in a lot of areas. The cheap laptop will probably have a smaller battery, fewer ports, no SDXC or Thunderbolt, no aluminum unibody, and so forth.

Apple is not taking any loss on the iPad. The hardware alone is still quite profitable, even at the $500 starting price. Apple buys in very large bulk.

And material cost estimate of the iPad 3 put the 16GB memory at $16. And that $1 per gigabyte sounds about right. I suspect Apple gets that even cheaper, so the price is probably on the high end. The $100 price to double that to 32GB is kinda annoying to me. It's not an Apple thing, everyone does this and everyone annoys me when they do it.

Ultrabooks are expensive because this form factor is still relatively new, at least it's current thinness of it. Intel has created a $300 million investment fund to help companies develop better designs for affordable Ultrabooks. Because Intel definitely realizes that at $1000, it's still too expensive to gain mass appeal. People don't really need a super thin laptop that badly. But if they get Ultrabooks down to $500, then suddenly people will go crazy for them. But they are still a ways from that. There are some $700 ultrabooks, but they are kinda lame so far.

So unlike the $100 for 16GB of flash memory that is just robbery. The $1000 ultrabooks is what it is because they just can't make them much cheaper yet.

I don't know where you get your info from but it is seriously flawed. I'll give you one link but rest assured, there are several others echoing the data in this one.

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/12/03/16/high_cost_of_new_ipad_components_drive_down_profit_margins.html

 

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Responding to idiots with more than a sentence is rarely a good use of time.

Yeah, that was a mistaken assumption on my part. So many things are sold that way I just figured with the great display and what not it would cost more than $500 to make.

Good idea, the single sentence bit I mean, you really seem incapable of more than that.

 

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Here folks is a shining example of how VN became a cesspool.

I'd disagree. You'd have to look in the mirror to get a better look at the reason.

 

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