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Comment by bubblethink | Hacker News Reader

But the pricing needs to be internally consistent for the brand to be taken seriously, whether as a luxury brand or otherwise. In other words, a $1k piece of metal with a couple of moving parts undermines the rest of their portfolio. It's one thing to have a uniformly expensive lineup like a watchmaker, and entirely different thing to price your most complicated offering (phone) and the dumbest one (metal piece) the same. Like what's the message here ?

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> Like what's the message here?

The message is that Apple shit is so top of the line that even our monitor stand is an uncompromising work of art.

It’s really not that complicated, it’s a textbook luxury branding and pricing strategy. Ever seen a Restoration Hardware catalog? They sell painted tree stumps for $1000.

> it’s a textbook luxury branding and pricing strategy.

The problem is that this 10x overpricing strategy doesn't apply to their entire lineup, but that's not made explicit. As a result, people might mistakenly generalise it to their other products such as iPhones, leading people to think that their phones are also 10x overpriced and are actually only worth $100, thus diminishing its value.

Haha, no. The average person does not think that deeply or use that much math.

I'd wager the average person is more likely to grasp the mathematical incongruency than have the buying power to afford the incongruency.

I think the average person who is an iPhone owner can look at their phone and to this monitor stand and think "why do they cost almost the same?" easily.

Price is one thing that most people are quite sensitive about.

The poster above is trying to say that luxury branding has to have at least a veneer of justification for its pricing. The $1000 painted tree stump supposes its own value as a piece of art. A $1000 watch might cost $200 to produce, but it's jewelry - the whole point is you're paying for the pure aesthetic value of it.

The monitor stand has a nice appearance, but everyone understands that it's a mass-produced, functional product that can't justify its cost artistically or by virtue of materials and construction. The stand is also usually included with the monitor!

There's a clear message change. We've moved from "this is the cost of luxury" to "this is the cost we've greedily slapped onto a random part you need"

The difference between the two isn't vast- you have to pay attention to the nuance here.

> Like what's the message here ?

I guess the stand is for different audience with audiophile-level fanaticism towards Apple products or for organizations that don't care about the price, but definitely not for mass market.

While the screen seems decently priced (though hard to tell before reviews), the base configuration of the new Mac Pro is at $6k at least twice as expensive as it has any right to be, and much more expensive than previous base models. And given how low-specced that base model is and how expensive Apple upgrade always are compared to normal market prices we can expect the Mac Pro to be at least twice as expensive as comparable PCs across the entire line.

The price for the phone likely has to be this low, though if this genuinely is a new strategy they might introduce a gold version or something like that. However getting the newest iPhone each year is already mostly a status symbol, while the monitor stand probably has a lifetime more comparable with a watch.

> The price for the phone likely has to be this low

That sounds as if you are saying the iPhone is cheap.

There's lots of $1000 phones now. As with most Apple phone changes, the other OEMs and users complain at first ("no more headphone jack!", the iPhone-X front screen bevel) then end up doing it themselves.

And let's not forget some go higher than the iPhones like the $2000 Samsung Galaxy Fold.

Also, Apple always makes older gen phones available if you're price sensitive -- the iPhone 7 (and 8) is available starting at $300 on their site for example.

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