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Comment by chairsofter | Hacker News Reader

This is what I don't get: people applaud Apple for their massive profit margins when in reality it just shows how they're screwing the consumer. Does nobody care about the betterment of the general public -us!?- around here? By buying products with huge profit margins you're spending money on features that you're not getting. And THAT is why I refuse to buy Apple products.

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Trade is generally a positive-sum game. The fact that the producer makes a profit means there is a producer surplus but the fact that consumers buy it means there is a consumer surplus too. The general public thinks iPhones are worth more than what Apple is charging, so they buy it.

By buying products with large profit margins you're sending a message that you want the company to stay in business and grow and keep doing what it's doing.

> By buying products with huge profit margins you're spending money on features that you're not getting.

No, part of what makes Apple so valuable is that they resist adding more "features" than the bare minimum, in favor of trying to preserve their best feature: simplicity.

'Consumer surplus' is an economic term, and it's simply a calculated or derived quantity. The fact of the matter is, marketing can change opinions on what a product is worth, or whether it should be bought. Surplus, in other words, is very much manipulable by marketing and advertisement. Consumers think iPhones are worth buying because Apple managed to convince them, and their friends, of it. Not because they may inherently provide more utility/enjoyment over their lifespan than a product from a competitor.

I don't mean to imply Apple products are overpriced in general. I mostly just prefer to discount/devalue marketing when making decisions on what to buy, and instead focus on the features that are important to me.

The standard free market theory is that profit attracts competitors that enter the market and drive down those profits. They would have gotten away with it too if it wasn't for those pesky patents.

Well, I enjoy using my Apple gears tremendously and they enable to do a lot of things that I wouldn't be able to do otherwise. I'd rather pay a $400 premium on a MacBook and have peace of mind for two years. People pay 100 times more for cars and housing.

Obviously I'm not implying that you or others don't care about 'peace of mind' and are cheap bastards who never pay for anything :) - it just happens that you don't find a MacBook or iPad or iPhone as valuable for you and your lifestyle as I do, and purchase what suits you best.

So I guess you must hate Samsung product now, since they have started to make a good profit as well?

That is one of the more ridiculous reasons for not buying Apple.

Samsung doesn't have 70% profit margins on their mobile devices: that's highway robbery.

How many owners of iPhones and iPads feel "screwed"?

That's just it: Apple has managed to market its products, and especially its mobile devices, as better-no-matter-what. They're consistently behind the punch and offer a pretty feature-dilute experience.

It's also been mentioned that you pay for the "peace of mind," but can anybody here actually quantify what that means on a mobile device? I also find this really ironic because this comes after antenna-gate which most people seem to have forgot. We're consistently told by the media and Apple's marketing that buying from them is a safe bet, has this ever actually meant anything?

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