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When will people learn...

Companies DO NOT pay for stupid lawsuits like that.
YOU AND I PAY FOR IT!  

That's right.  We pay a premium to Apple, not only for great design and the world's best OS, but we also pay the stupid morons of the world indirectly when they sue Apple and win. We then have people rush in to say that it doesn't matter because "in the greater scheme of things, it's small money for Apple."  They always make ridiculous comparisons like that rather than looking at that truly big money in absolute terms.  Fact is, somebody pays for it.  Apple pays it in your behalf first, then we the consumer pay it back later, slowly, over time, as we buy Apple products and services.

Am I happy about that?  Heck no!  
Is it Apple's fault?  No.  
It's the fault of the stupid morons out there, and their blood sucking lawyers.

Sometimes I wish nobody had the right to sue about anything.  Too many people abuse the very system that is supposed to keep order in society, and society pays a heavy price for it.

4.35% is not that great.

Fidelity Investments has been offering 4.97% for a long while now.

Finally!!!

Throughout all these years, even while reading article after article about it, I knew deep down in my heart that this "rumor" was little more than that.  It made no sense whatsoever that Apple, a computer and iPhone company, would make a car.  It seemed so crazy to me.  And then today, we see this article saying the idea is all but dead.  That makes the most sense of all.

Follows what I've been saying.  People who think VISION PRO will soon drop to AliExpress prices are delusional.

In 1984, the Macintosh made its debut for $2,495.  Later that year, the Macintosh was upgrade with a decent amount of RAM.  Cost?  $3195 initially, because RAM was expensive in those days.  The Mac 128K dropped to $2,195, but is that really an AliExpress drop? LOL.  No.  What about the Mac 512Ke?  Oh look!  A price drop! Now only $1,999.  That's sure to please the AliExpress price lovers!  Oh wait...  The 512Ke came out in 1986 when the Mac Plus also came out, selling for $2,600 -- more than the original 128K Mac.  How about the Mac SE in 1987?  Nope. $2,898, unless you wanted a 20MB hard disk, and then $3,698. (Admittedly, the Mac Plus still sold during the SE years.) Surely the 1989 compact Macs must have been cheaper, you say?  Nope.  The SE/30 came out for $4,369 for a mere 1MB of RAM and no hard disk, rising to $6,569 for 4MB of RAM and an 80MB HDD.

I could go on, but you get the picture.

When newer models include even better, cutting edge tech inside as compared with the original model, the price doesn't go down.  Traditionally, it has gotten more expensive.  And certainly, inflationary pressures will drive that too.  And while older models like the Mac Plus continued to be sold alongside better and more expensive models like the SE, the Plus was never AliExpress cheap.

Even if you argue that the cost of the current cutting edge tech will go down over time, and even if you argue that increased sales volumes will drive the price down as compared to now, I simply don't see VISION PRO becoming a $500 product that competes with META.  Strip out all the expensive features that make VISION PRO unique and better, sure.  But Apple would be stupid to do that.

So let's get our expectations adjusted in accordance with reality, folks.

Checked the comments and sure enough there were falsehoods.  I purchased two G4 Cubes back in the day, was an active member of Cubeowner.com and read most of the Cube related info about that machine.  It's been my avatar for over two decades.  They WERE NOT CRACKS!  They were indeed mold lines.  And any lines on my two Cubes are not that prominent.  You had a bunch of people grabbing their magnifying glasses back in the day to scrutinize every last thing because it was a pricey computer for what you got.  Then you had the silly media trashing it over price and how unpopular it was, in part because the media trashed it.  And yet, the G4 Cube to this day continues to be an incredible piece of industrial design.  It's truly fantastic.  So get over the "they were cracks" line.  G4 Cubes were not cracking at all.

Now this news report about VISION PRO could be something very different than the G4 Cube, because like I said, those lines on the Cube are MOLD LINES, not cracks.  Furthermore, the G4 Cube's case was thick plastic, whereas the glass on the VISION PRO is extremely thin and even has a thin film on the outside which is highly prone to scratching.  The two really cannot be compared.

Honestly, it isn't too surprising that there are reports of cracked glass.  Anything wearable needs to be made durable.  Apple couldn't make the glass any thicker because even now it is a bit heavy.  And just like when you put those thin glass protectors on your iPhone, cracks occurring during normal use happen.  The thinner the glass, the more likely it is to happen.

This is upsetting news to be sure.  We have too many people unnecessarily trashing Apple's ground-breaking VISION PRO as it is, so news like this will no doubt make some would-be buyers reconsider.  Not sure how best Apple should address this, but addressing people's concerns is paramount if sales of the device are to lead to future models and new innovations over time, no unlike the iPhone.  But as was the case with the G4 Cube, if few people buy it, Apple could abandon it.  And that would be yet another crying shame.