quote:
Originally posted by Garndell
£899 Inclusive of VAT.
$1299 (US)
for this:
http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/...try.wo?family=iMac
• 512MB DDR400 SDRAM - 1 DIMM
• 160GB Serial ATA drive
• Combo Drive (DVD-ROM/CD-RW)
• Keyboard and Mouse + Mac OS X - U.S. English
• 56Kbps Modem
• 17-inch widescreen LCD
• 1.8GHz PowerPC G5
• ATI Radeon 9600 with 128MB DDR Video Memory
• AirPort Extreme
• Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR
To me, in order to increase Apples market share they would need to put it closer in price to PC's.
Say £749 (UK) & $1050 (US)
That does surprisingly enough still give Apple a Profit on each machine, which does go to show the kind of markup Apple pu on their machines.
Still, it's a pretty nice machine and i'm sure you'll enjoy it greatly.
Apple don't benifit from economies of scale as much as wintel manufacturers do. Since the hardware manufacturers can make generic parts for PCs, they become cheaper since they are making more of them, but since they make bespoke parts for Apple, they parts are more expensive and so Apple have increased costs.
/ 
