[Off-topic] enigmaamit:
Well, the Macbook happened when my trusty 5 year old HP DV6 died on me suddenly last month. The two major gripes I had with all full fledged Windows laptops (not the puny Atom equipped ultrabooks) were weight and battery life. There were only two machines that ticked all my boxes: the Dell XPS13 and the Macbook Pro 2015. The Dell lost out because of the weird camera placement (bottom left) and actually being more expensive than the Mac!!. In addition, Apple had back to school discount running, so I was able to snag the 256GB version for $250 less. Also, after using the trackpad and experiencing force touch, I wanted to at least give the damn thing a shot - I can always move back to Windows in the next upgrade. Or even run Windows natively on the mac if I don't like OSX (that is not the case however - I think it's a superb OS)

I agree the Macbook is overpriced, but until the SurfaceBook launch by Microsoft, it's had no real challenger at all. And in a market without a worthy competitor, monopoly ensues. Look at the iPhone for example. There are a zillion phones out there that try to take it down, but get shot down at some level or the other. I think it has less to do with how good Apple is, and more to do with a single company building and controlling every aspect of design, manufacturing, software and hardware, sales, distribution as well as service.

I think any other company that follows the same philosophy will churn out vastly superior products than the current generation of taped-and-glued-together devices where none of the components (tangible or otherwise) have any history together before they meet on the assembly table. However, in today's market that's easier said than done, and it is just not economically feasible for any startup (let alone existing manufacturers like Samsung) to put in place the formidable sales and service network it has built over the last 6 years. Add to that the reputation that the fruit has built over time, and you have a self-sustaining machine of domination! Is there any other manufacturer that has a better overall service rating than Apple? I know I've jumped through hoops like a monkey for Samsung as well as HTC service here in India.

What's the single downside to an Apple product?

Cost.

If you eliminate the cost factor.... if the iPhone were to cost as much as a OnePlus One or a Xiaomi Mi4, would you still criticize it? How many hundreds of millions additional units do you think the fruit company would sell then?

Well, that brings us to the phones that DO cost as much as the OPO, or the Xiaomi Mi4 - namely, the OPO and the Xiaomi Mi4! What's the quality control on these things? My wife owns a OPO - the sandstone black coating on the back started peeling off in 6 months, the bottom half of the screen is yellow tinted (this is the second replacement unit - same issue), the CM OS on it is buggy with camera issues and lock ups, etc. There are two official OS forks for the damn thing - CyanogenOS and OxygenOS.

TWO.OFFICIAL.FORKS! (both are buggy, btw)

I've decided not to touch it... it's not rooted, not bootloader unlocked, doesn't run greenify, xposed or any of those things. I shouldn't have to! It's her phone - she should be able to use it sans bugs without having to lug around an XDA member to rescue her all the time.

Now I understand that the phone was built as an experiment with an extremely low profit margin, yada, yada, yada (read: higher margin for error and compromises). When you build a device with a low margin, you have to set your quality control standards sufficiently low. Because every device that comes off the assembly line that doesn't meet the standards, gets discarded. The cost of this "bad" device is therefore a loss that has to be made up in the sales of the remaining "good" devices. As the number of bad devices increases, the margins on the good ones keeps dropping, and if there is a significant manufacturing lacuna, this leads to a point of non-sustainability. So what are the only choices left with the manufacturer?

1. Scrap the design and build a new device with new materials, components, manufacturing infrastructure overhaul, etc. (not pretty - read:bankrupcy)

2. Lower the quality control acceptability bar, so that more "bad" devices get through.

That the second option is cleared by any board of directors in a heartbeat is a no-brainer. What follows is a product released to the market where every 1 in 5 to 10 pieces is defective. KNOWINGLY SUB-STANDARD. But costs can be kept low, so that’s nice, right? Can’t fault the manufacturer for trying to keep afloat and I can understand that.

One the other end of the spectrum, If a manufacturer were to decide that it would stick to the highest possible quality standards, discarding even mildly sub-par devices in a heartbeat, what would remain at the end of the filtering process are devices that are impeccable and uniformly comparable. They WOULD however, carry over the financial burden of their fallen brethren who didn’t survive the QC assault. This makes them expensive. Add to that the quasi-religious fan following, the superlative infused brilliant product marketing by Apple, the scarcity heuristic (The harder it is to get an object, the more desirable it becomes) surrounding its products, stability of their software, a sound app ecosystem, better designed apps (also, developers get paid more per app on iOS), and you can see the customer push through the price barrier. It all depends on how anal you are about your device. If you can “accept” certain issues because it’s an “affordable” or “subsidized” device, good for you. If you can’t - then look towards the fruit. I haven’t even started to account for cost of inventory needed to be maintained and updated constantly to support the hundreds of millions of devices out in the market, and other such factors that being a mere Orthopedic Surgeon, I must confess I have little comprehensive knowledge of.

Now I’m not trying to justify Apple’s cut-throat prices. They make the crappiest, most expensive cables that keep falling apart every couple of months, their licencing is way too expensive, their policies are restrictive (to some), they are a walled garden, and so on. But it’s a safe garden. The walls hold. You can sit inside and lounge in peace. It’s not for everyone, but its not bad either.

I wish just as much as the next guy that their devices cost half of what they do. But over time, I have come to understand why they never can.

If you want an open ecosystem with freedom to “customize”, good for you. If there is a certain way you want your OS to function, if you’re about freedom to choose your hardware, there is amazing variety and choice out there with Android. But there is a bunch of people out there with a lot of money who either don’t have the inclination or the time to care about all that. This bunch just wants a well-designed phone that may not do EVERYTHING, but what it does, it does without a freeze, or an app crash, or a random reboot, and doesn’t run on last year’s software (yeah, yeah… I can hear the bleating too)

Sorry for the rant. Doc out.