>Have you ever tried getting help from a vendor that you know is selling something at 5% margins? Good luck to you..
Dell has incredibly good support (and if you want wipe your arse support, you can pay for it and get it). Their products are also shockingly well built. Seriously, Dell servers are just brilliantly put together.
They manage to combine small margins with a decent product. Everyone wins.
On the R&D front, Apple is a marginal investor in R&D. The iPhone 4 software is great, but the hardware -- it's a collection of off the shelf products. The same stuff that goes in that 2% margin no name device.
Which of course is true for Apple desktops as well. Apple once tried to do their own thing, and it didn't turn out so well. So now it's the same commodity parts that you would find in every discount bin white box brand.
Dell has incredibly good support (and if you want wipe your arse support, you can pay for it and get it). Their products are also shockingly well built. Seriously, Dell servers are just brilliantly put together.
They manage to combine small margins with a decent product. Everyone wins.
On the R&D front, Apple is a marginal investor in R&D. The iPhone 4 software is great, but the hardware -- it's a collection of off the shelf products. The same stuff that goes in that 2% margin no name device.
Which of course is true for Apple desktops as well. Apple once tried to do their own thing, and it didn't turn out so well. So now it's the same commodity parts that you would find in every discount bin white box brand.