The craziest thing is they even charge $8 for non-ground shipping. I just bought from a website that did free 2 day shipping on all items over $50!

And even with that — your package could sit at Fedex for five extra days because it wasn’t “scheduled” to be delivered until Wednesday! $8 well spent.

Even crazier, Nintendo charges $5 for "UPS Mail Innovations" ground shipping (which basically uses the post office)

> which basically uses the post office

Pretty sure this isn't quite true—UPS ships it all the way to your local post office, and the post office does the last mile.

In other words, the USPS does the part that is actually difficult and expensive.

I wonder if in a long run this actually injures the brand.

Maybe demand increases as the price increases?

A Veblen good is a type of luxury good for which demand increases as the price increases, in apparent contradiction of the law of demand, resulting in an upward-sloping demand curve. A higher price may make a product desirable as a status symbol in the practices of conspicuous consumption and conspicuous leisure. A product may be a Veblen good because it is a positional good, something few others can own.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good

I think it does if the product isn't seen as best-in-class. I mean, whichever kind of fanboy you are, you have to agree that a late-model iPhone is an absolutely excellent phone. That's a different question from whether it's worth the money. I am guessing that these wheels are also excellent but that Apple hasn't communicated that well. They don't talk about how these wheels are great. They just say that they are wheels.

Because at the end of the day, no matter how great they are, they are just wheels.

Nothing to do with brand and everything to do with Enterprise spending.

Enterprise spending consists of obscene markups.

Perhaps studios etc are buying these, but "enterprise" spending usually shops at Dell or HP.

why?

The Mac Pros start at $6K. Choosing every max option except for the wheels is $54K. $700 for wheels isn't that crazy in relation to the product price.

Plus, if you know you want the wheels before purchasing, you can get them for $400 in the configurator

Mac Pro maxed out here in Australia is A$82,737.98

<gasp>

Remember to buy them in twos so you can keep working when that legendary Apple quality happens!

..they left out filters for the high velocity fans -hope everything is nice and grounded too, because: static.

My current Catalina MBP (and all OS since I bought that machine) apparently cannot handle multi-users well.

Constant strange bugs, flashing login screens and freezing apps (if used by multiple users). Changes to settings cause password/TouchId confirmation popups for the other user that block the system.

If I am logged into two accounts, opening the MBP will show a login screen for user A, then open the desktop for user B (didn't want to see that), then quickly flash to a login screen for user B and upon entering the password/TouchId flashing back to the main login page and voila, you can finally login as expected.

It's so strange.