>Maybe Apple can endure a lot more pain than their competitors, but that's not magic, that's because of the pile of cash they're sitting on.

Exactly. They make enough margin on other things to not be forced to be so aggressive with pricing on other things.

>but basic market forces don't stop applying just because it's Apple.

My point was: the cost of things is much more complicated than "basic market forces" [1].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pricing_strategies