I am by no means an Apple fan, but I've noticed that a lot of people are blindly hating Apple for its 'corporate greed'. Its a company guys, they are ALL out there to milk you for every dollar you are willing to give them.. They don't like consumer surplus! They want to milk it all. Why do you think companies use multi-part pricing strategies? Because they like lowering their margins for some customers? No.. they want every dollar people are willing to give them.
Apple has taken the 'quality' market strategy. There are so many companies taking the 'value' strategy that trying to compete in that market will lead to lower profits and reduced volumes (they obviously would have to sacrafice quality to lower their costs at this pricing point). Thus, it makes no sense for apple to operate in that range.
Apple has taking a good market stance, and as previously mentioned by others, by having proprietary technologies, LIKE SO MANY COMPANIES, they are able to increase their revenues. They are counting on Bob buying his 30$ connector, rolling over it with his chair or losing it, and having to buy another. Is that greed? No, thats a company. Also, having bought 100s, 1000s, of dollars worth of Apple-specific products, Bob is likely to continue buying apple even if he wants to try another companys product.
People aren't iSheep because they buy Apple, they just have a higher intrinsic value for those products than the premium prices Apple charges relative to PC equivalents (for whatever reason it may be... they may like OSX more, or want to develop iOS apps, etc.)
Anyways, I probably wouldn't buy a knockoff cable if I had the money to afford Apple devices
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