Please elaborate. More specifically, I don't see how the bold supports the underlined.
Didn't I do that already? Apple products imho are overpriced to the extreme. A company who cares about costs should go for value for money. The way that it is, the customer gets the impression
"hey, they are trying to be cool, using fancy luxury products for something as simple as information input. Obviously they have money to waste. Hey, wait a minute, in the end I have to pay for that. Well, now I know why I don't get a discount or why their product is so expensive to begin with".
Now, I personally am not saying that this line of thought is entirely logical, but especially when it comes to buying cars, logic often doesn't apply.
At least German customers are very price minded, and are used to getting big discounts. Now they have a startup automaker who says "here is our product, this is its price. If you want it, take it, if not, leave it". To German customers, especially in the premium segment, that kind of attitude is highly strange and is certainly part of the reason why the Model S doesn't sell that well over here, at least much worse than EM had hoped (1,000 per month I think he had in mind originally). The ipads used for no real reason (they only used them to get the personal data of the customer, honestly, what a waste of equipment, they wouldn't even have needed an Android tablet for that actually) are just a tiny part in that overall picture.
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AustinPowers: There's a reason Apple sells so well and why people pay "the Apple Tax". It applies to car buyers as well. The fact is, by and large, for the majority of the consuming public, it just WORKS. It passes what I call "The Mommy Test" - people can figure stuff out without a manual.
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The same holds true for Tesla. Yeah, you can buy a Volt for less money. You can buy a Ford Fusion Energi for less money - but you're losing money when you look at all the maintenance and consumables that go into it.
To answer to the second argument first: as we have discussed in lots of other threads and postings, the TCO argument doesn't necessarily hold true for all. Tesla annual maintenance costs for example are considerably higher than what we have had to pay for any of our ICE cars we ever had. Factor in the expensive electricity in Germany and the high starting price of the Model S and you arrive very quickly at a scenario where the Model S is quite a bit more expensive to run than its ICE counterpart.
And as for the first argument: maybe I am a genius (I highly doubt that), but I have never needed to look at a manual to use an Android device either. Even our three year old daughter has found out how to work mum's and dad's Android phones - actually we were shocked when we first saw her consciously unlock these phones and navitage to the videos, pictures or games she wanted to watch or play. And again, we are talking about a
three year old for crying out loud!
So no, I don't see any advantage in Apple products for the average user.
The fact of the matter is that as far as I have had the chance to experience,
image (and effective advertising, like with cars) seems to be the main reason why people tend to ignore the high price of Apple devices. In some "scenes" (for lack of a better word), if you want to be regarded as cool, hip and "with it", you just have to have an Apple device (and every year a new one at that, because - of course - once a new device comes out, the one that came before (which until the day the successor became available was cool, hip and impossible to live without) immediately becomes crap, obsolete and uncool!)
