Xed

designr said:

1. $3,500
2. Face-scanning to size it.
3. Half-hour sales pitch.

Could they possibly put anymore friction on the customer path?

That sounds like a first class experience to idealize a product for the buyer. 

I forget which in-ear headphone maker would send a person to you to get a mold of your ear canal for a custom fit, but that was a thing it and it was expensive. I'm not sure that's still a thing, but plenty of makers offer in-home kids for takin a mold. Based on your comment that's also friction over just supplying 3 different in-ear tip sizes. I know those custom fit one also cost a lot more than even your typical high-end options but that's shouldn't be shocking.

Then you have this "sales pitch" so people can know how to use and experience this new way of computing without tit being frustrating or missing key features/uses, both of  which will lead to the product not being used. This is no different than a luxury car maker giving you an in-depth experience of the car you want to purchase and the car you do purchase, even if you are sold on it.

Not the first time a tutorial for a new usage model from Apple.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvcwFYPiKKA

pulseimages said:

The LG Signature OLED T is interesting but if it’s wireless how do you connect a gaming system to it? 

The reference to wireless is how the Zero Connect Box sends A/V to the display and speakers. It does mean that the Zero Connect Box won't have any HDMI ports for connecting media appliances, gaming consoles, cable/sat boxes, eARC etc.

It's also not the kind of display you want for gaming (or even watching movies) as it's not a great traditional OLED display on its own.

I love the concept of the Dynamic Island and maybe it was always meant to be more of a sublet feature, but I do feel that its full potential has been fully realized (read: implemented) yet by Apple. What that potential is I cannot say, but every time I think about it I get this niggle that something seemingly obvious has been overlooked.

Rogue01 said:

If Apple offers a 1TB option, they charge 4x the industry standard for 1TB of storage, so now you are looking at $4,000 to run iPadOS apps.  

Apple really needs to stop with their extortion tactics for memory and SSD prices.  It was better when you could upgrade memory and storage on your own, because no one bought the Apple upgrades.  Similar to the printer market in which the ink cartridges sometimes cost more than the actual printer.  Now Apple has the consumer over the barrel and they know it and charge ridiculous prices.

1a) How exactly do you know how much they charge for any specific component? You don't. You only know what they charge for the range of a product line and you think you can extrapolate their profit of a specific component based on that configuration variance. You can't. Their profit margin is based on their estimated sales across the range. They offer entry level options to entice buyers with a lower profit margin for obvious reasons.

1b) A fun little spreadsheet experiment with a  you can run is to adjust the prices for a given product category (e,g, 16" MacBook Pro) where Apple would get the same profit margin, but you alter the cost for the chipset, unified memory, storage, or anything else you'd like, to see how that would affect the low-end of that product.

2) You may feel slighted they want to entice buyers to try out Apple products or increase their net revenue and profits, but that's fucking business. What it's not is extortion. If you actually have a problem with this you can A) buy the low end product knowing that Apple's net profit will be lower, or 2) choose to boycott Apple altogether. Or, if you really feel this is extortion you can take Apple to court.