Which is infuriating why Apple don't make their products more competitive.

For the same reason that MS don't price their software more reasonably- the customers will pay it.

It's called capitalism

In these times, people simply wont be able to pay Apples prices.

They won't be able to afford laptops with the top edition of Vista or be able to buy Microsoft Office.

I would agree with your argument if Macs were more reliable than PCs. According to these figures they are not. Even discounting the results for Asus, Lenovo seem to be more reliable than Apple.

Do you have any links that show otherwise?

Price has a huge impact on how a product is perceived. Go too cheap and people think it will be rubbish.

Although if you give it away (Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris) people will think that it is functional and rock solid. It's a funny old world!

Anyway, most of Apple's software is very affordable compared to the competition.

I think the discussion here was about Apple hardware. It would be hard to argue that their hardware is good value compared to PCs.

And don't forget the cost of all those different versions of Vista

My girlfriends Vista Pro laptop was under £400, 2 years ago. She doesn't use Microsoft Office, nor does anyone I know outside work.

Vista Pro isn't the top edition, that is Vista Premium.

It comes with an OEM licence which is non transferable.

Plenty of people I know run Office outside of work. It's the only piece of software many of them want Windows for.

Have you never been a student or updated a CV?

Edited by deleted (Sun 29-Mar-09 22:21:18)

increasing the price on their new model Macbook to a couple of hundred quid over the old one is just astonishing

isn't some of that a reflection of our currency being on it's knees at the moment?

TBH i've not checked apple.com against UK store, but i would expect any price hikes in the US to be less.

Most people I know who use Vista couldn't even tell you which version they have, including my gf. It's just an OS and as long as they can browse the internet and send/receive emails it's pretty much all they need. I know the Mac OS is better, I use it every day of every week unless I'm away from home. The point is that Macs are, since the recent updates, well overpriced.

The matter of Microsofts licencing and OEMs is a different matter. More the reason for Apple to compete more aggressively on a pricing front.