> I even tell my dealer to change my tires twice a year
> I even drilled a hole my wall, and bought a 60 feet cable, at the cost of $300
> Yep, I am one of the drooling mac fanatics.
Being a car guy, I can say that properly maintaining sports cars is not cheap.
To the average person who loathes paying $300 for a set of all-season tires every 40K-50K miles, maintenance budgets for a high-performance car can be terrifying.
I had to do long distance commuting in a Lancer Evolution MR for a while. The ultra-grippy tires would last about 10K commuting like a sane person. You could destroy them during a single track day at Watkins Glen. At $1300 a set (shipped, mounted, and balanced). And you still needed to maintain a good set of winter tires despite an absurdly complex torque-vectoring AWD system. And tires were not the biggest items on the maintenance budget.
Even the cheapest sports car money can buy in the US, a Miata, tears through $800 sets of summer tires pretty handily.
People aren't oblivious. Everyone has their priorities. Home. Cars. Technology. Food. Travel. Other hobbies. What some find ridiculous, others find normal, and vice-versa.
But I already have a 16 gigabyte USB stick, or a 16 gigabyte SD card I bought from Frys, on sale, for $40. Apple's going to charge me $100 for something I already have, and they're gonna charge me two times the price? If there was an SD slot, I could buy the 16 gigabyte iPad and use the SD card I already have, instead of buying the $600, 32-gigabyte iPad vs. the $500, 16-gigabyte version. It's a nickel-and-dime to the tune of 99-cents an app, and I don't like it. Nor can I really argue against the current success of the iPhone. If it costs me extra to get something that actually works, I'll actually get it, because it'll actually work.
(edit: clarified '...charge me $100...')
Could you explain what you mean by this? I don't understand how Apple fits in to your previous purchases.
In order to have a 32-gigabyte iPad, I have to purchase the 32-gigabyte version for $600.
If the iPad had an SD card slot, I could hypothetically purchase a 16-gigabyte iPad for $500 and use my previously purchased 16-gigabyte SD card.
This is akin to the different Windows editions. The basic edition is exactly the same as the pro edition, except for the restrictions, so they can justify the price difference.
The connection isn't to Apple's prices: they made it, they get to decide pricing (and features).
The connection is between my previous purchase, and my next (considered) purchase and the connection there is me. Buying doesn't happen in a vacuum, though 'cost to me' is perhaps a better way of looking at it.
The 'charge' occurs when Apple omits a card slot though it is their right to do so. This locks me into their pricing structure, which means I have to pay their prices. I already have 16-gigabytes that I could use in a device with an SD slot, but the lock-in requires that I pay their prices, and if I want the 32-gigabyte iPad, then I have to pay what Apple charges and I cannot use my previous purchase to offset that cost.