This company is making obscene amounts of profit only to hand most of it over to people whose contribution to apple’s success is zero, instead of spending it on improving the products or customers actually responsible for that success. If this isn’t a condemnation of what’s wrong with capitalism, I don’t know what is. Tim Cook may have no other choice, but it is despicable that he doesn’t.
the lack of (competent) competition is what's the problem, not that that there's return on capital. I don't like Apple, but I hardly can blame them, when they can make all this money by simply being the least shit generally okay-ish option.
People who pretend Apple wasn't different under Job are magnificent gaslighters and should not be taken seriously about anything really...
It's a forced and planned obsolescence and nothing else.
All the required cost for the product and support is already included in the product cost as it being costly compared to its competitors. All other stuff that they do around it is pure marketing and projection to make people believe and have that sense of something super duper is being offered to them which doesn't exist and is unique.
While some of is acceptable, but majority of it is useless or not used or used once or twice in it's lifetime. Except for some professionals.
Just swindling people of their hard earned monies...
Last I checked Apple products get about 7 years of updates. My 2016 MacBook Pro is falling off the edge of security updates about now.
I'd prefer 10 years, but it's more than two.
The exception may be more recent intel Macs which are likely to be obsoleted at a faster rate due to the ARM/Apple Silicon transition. Though I guess you can still run Windows. ;-p
The author feigns indignance at Apple's margins, as if the only possible purpose for that markup is to line the pockets of Apple execs. But this isn't pure profit for Apple. Apple develops feature and security updates which they make available for free (at the point of use) for years to their hardware customers. The significant hardware markup is what enables this!
Contrast this to companies that sell hardware at cost. You find phones and laptops crammed with programs to collect and monetize your data, and zero security or driver updates.
A company that charges full price up front is at least in a position to afford to be able to do the right thing by users.