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i read an article on forbes the other day that kind of ground my gears but i

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wasn't going to make a video about it at least not until several more just like

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it popped up in my news feed the author wrote an opinion piece

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mocking the 700 wheels that apple recently put up for sale for their mac

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pro workstation as tone deaf a bad

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product for consumers and as an expensive fail

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the author contrasts the price tag with both the msrp of the mac pro itself and

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an assortment of other apple products that you could buy for such a princely

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sum finding it outrageous that something as simple as wheels to help your mac

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roll away from you could cost so much i agree with all of that none of that is

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what ruffled my feathers mr spence is right it's outrageous

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but i think he's also playing right into

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apple's hand by complaining about it let's discuss let's discuss how this

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this isn't a one-off the cycle has been going on forever apple does something

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outrageous the community reacts with adoration or condemnation depending

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which stickers adorn their bumper then apple takes all of that feedback and

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changes absolutely nothing in the last five years alone we've been treated to

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the following the solid gold edition first generation apple watch that was

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ten to seventeen thousand dollars for a product that turned into a paperweight a

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mere three years later when they dropped software support there was the picture

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book that took eight years to create cost two to three hundred dollars and

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served no purpose other than to market apple's products to visitors in your

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home even we got in on the mockery that time around and let us not forget the

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thousand dollar monitor stand 9.99 and

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like the mac pro they'll all be available in this in the fall it's

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like other monitor stands except that it traded basic features like swivel and

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height adjust for more magic

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all of these products were created to serve a number of purposes the first and

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most obvious of which is to exchange them for money from people who want them

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so for profit but the thing is with how

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few of them apple would expect to sell that wouldn't be enough to justify their

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existence to get to the root of why they are so expensive we need to go one layer

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deeper something every single one of the products i listed has in common is that

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it's the very definition of a luxury item quite literally nobody on earth

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actually needs any of them

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computer wheels for instance the mac pro cannot operate unless it is plugged into

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the wall so even if you wanted to move it around while you were using it you

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actually couldn't okay so mr spence actually touched on

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this one in his article reason number two is that products that are as

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unnecessary as they are expensive serve to create a perception of scarcity and

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prestige that is incredibly valuable to consumer brands because the cold hard

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truth is that apple products at face value are neither scarce nor prestigious

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walk around a high school and okay it's empty right now because of

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covid but if it wasn't everyone and their little sister would

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be blue bubble texting away on an iphone

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apple makes consumer electronics and yes

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they are pricey but between the second hand market and carrier subsidies even

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kids can afford one if they go without food or let's say a kidney for a little

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while although i'm not saying i recommend either of those and here's the

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deal if you want to stay cool as a status symbol brand it's important to

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have products in your portfolio that most people really will only ever get to

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see in the studios of influencers or in

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a product placement on tv or by getting up off their butt and going to your

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store these are called halo products let's use NVIDIA's titan line of

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graphics cards as an example an rtx titan costs twice as much as a 2080 ti

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while performing nearly identically and why not i guess if someone is enough of

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a fanboy or is ignorant enough to give you more money than other people can

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reasonably afford why not let them do it

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but you're also not going to spend 3 billion

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creating a product that will sell so few you'd have to sell it for two or three

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times as much in order to justify that exhibit a here would be enterprise GPU

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pricing so that's why the titan graphics card uses exactly the same GPU but just

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has a golden shroud the third and the

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least obvious reason that they do this is to make even the people who aren't

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impressed by it talk about apple we all

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know the expression there's no such thing as bad publicity that's because

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even a negative article about their overpriced wheels serves to add to the

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allure of the logo while even more importantly providing apple with free

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brand exposure that they would have otherwise had to pay for

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not only would that ad space in my google news feed have cost apple money

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but it actually would have been far less valuable a properly constructed opinion

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piece contains both a thesis and

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balanced background information in order to support it and since mr spence is a

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professional writer he provided me with some negative commentary sure but also

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some positive points referring to the mac pro as a beast highlighting the

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comparatively more reasonable price of 400 if you bought the wheels in the

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first place and pointing out what a great value some of apple's other

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products might be if you had 700 to blow

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on shiny gadgets i mean good luck getting all of that information across

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in one of your slick tv advertisements apple or wait that wouldn't be necessary

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forbes and everyone else already did it for you yes sly fox and anyway the more

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interesting question for me isn't why apple did this cause like i said earlier

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this isn't a one-off but rather why they chose a status symbol mac accessory

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rather than a golden iphone or something after thinking about it in the bath for

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a while the best bet that i could come up with was that they just weren't as

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worried about angering the mac community as the iphone one it's smaller for one

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thing and it's already taken such a beating over the last 10 years that

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what's one or two more insults

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and this would be completely consistent with their attitude towards the mac pro

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so far after the trash can apple obviously thought that mobile was going

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to completely take over and they would never need to create another mac pro

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until mobile didn't take over and people do still need desktops and they finally

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cave to the pressure but they did it on their terms as we discussed in our

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review they made no effort whatsoever to make the new cheese grater the mac that

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you would have in your home like the g5 was before it it's just there as a

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there okay we made it for you oh i'm glad that's over god

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now we can go back to selling airpods type of product outside of a very small

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subset of loyal users with big time hollywood budgets bankrolling their gear

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expenses apple rightly seems to view the mac pro 2019

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as an unnecessary luxury that they can sacrifice sales volume on in order to

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maintain the illusion that they are a luxury brand when they are in fact a

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consumer electronics brand because that's what they are again i know their

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stuff is expensive but by contrast the

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pricing for the things that anybody actually needs like

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some way to listen to music on their iphone now that it doesn't have a freaking headphone jack isn't that

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detached from reality yes they target the premium end of the market and there

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is an apple tax but their gross margins are public information and they're only

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making around 38 like they aren't marking their products

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up nearly as much as actual luxury brands are or even other tech hardware

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companies and they're nowhere near the profit margins of software giants like

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oracle or facebook anyway the point of all of this wasn't to slam mr spence

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forbes or any of the other people whose job it is to cover the consumer

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electronics industry or even apple it just was to help people understand why

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this keeps happening so that they can make an educated decision for themselves

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about whether they want to send out that angry tweet about expensive wheels or

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maybe just do what is actually the most destructive thing they can possibly do

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to apple's business and completely pretend that they don't exist speaking

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watching guys if you enjoyed this video maybe check out one where we totally

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participated in all of this and made a video about their what was it called

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table book like it was a fun video to make actually

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though we threw that together in like an afternoon

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hi my kids what can i do for you recess is over all right okay

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all right i gotta go homeschool my kids see ya