I provided you with two references from people in the technology reporting field on the cost premiums and pricing abilities. There are many other references just like those. All of them end up with the punch line that the price premiums paid for Macs are only a few dollars, and that this premium disappears if one takes design into account and provides a marginal price for it.

I have been saying in every post that Apple gets high gross margins on their products. I have also been supplying arguments as to why that is: Apple only sells products in the high-end category, Apple has the muscle to get components at cheaper prices than others, Apple has a more efficient manufacturing process, Apple has the muscle to force Foxconn to work cheaper for them than for others, Apple doesn't have to pay Microsoft for every computer produced - there are probably many other reasons Apple can retain high gross margins. But the point is that their margins are not solely, or even mostly, based on using smoke and mirrors to get people to buy overpriced crap.

EVERY PC manufacturer would kill to obtain Apples margins and supplier pliancy.

Yes, I have used virtualization software since the early 90's. Virtual machine software does not load before the OS. It runs on the OS. It is an application that provides (wait for it) a virtual machine to run other software in. I don't see your point in bringing it up. I mentioned that I can run windows on my mac in two ways - using a virtual machine to run it simultaneously with mac programs and rebooting the mac into solely windows only. In the later case, windows is running natively as it does on any PC hardware. The only thing that loads before the OS is the specific BIOS needed to run that OS. This is the same for Windows PC's.

BTW, VM software is not for macs only - that is a very minor part of the market. Most of it is running on mainframes, workstations, server farms and Windows PC's to provide functionality not available from their standard implementation. But it does allow macs to run windows software simultaneously. Try doing the opposite with windows.

So Apple's hardware is not closed and proprietary. Their OS is. But so is Windows.

Apple OS is based on BDS Unix. It will compile bog standard Unix effortlessly. I know this because I do it often. Apple does add to that core because they provide the user interface, drivers, etc on top of it. And yes, that is proprietary - just like Windows. They provide API's and development software for people to write programs using their OS - just like windows. Interestingly, Apple's OS kernel is open sourced - NOT like Windows. There is a public community built around developing and checking this OS kernel.

Trust me, just like Apple's decision to do away with floppy drives, make USB and firewire standard components on computers, make optical drives standard components, make widescreen displays standard components, etc - you will be looking back in the future and thanking them for driving Flash away from the scene and adopting open HTML standards.

I actually got a laugh from you pulling up Flash as an example of a good "open" system! Particularly when the alternative is the completely open, standardized and agreed upon HTML variant. How are the efforts going in getting Adobe to release the Flash source code? How is the security with Flash going? I think you started this whole thread by pointing out a security vulnerability with Flash and how it can even effect macs. Seems like Apple is taking the best path forward with their security response...

Mark