Look at articles about the Surface tablet. When they talk about possible pricing it's always "Do they dare price it more expensive than an iPad or do they undercut the iPad and lose money?"

Clearly the iPad price isn't inflated.

Look at the on-contract and off-contract prices of iPhones. Compare to say, Galaxy S3. Or the new Droid. Or the new Evo.

Clearly the iPhone price isn't inflated.

Want a consumer-line notebook? Apples consumer notebooks are the Air line. Find a good competitor, say the ASUS Zenbook UX31E. It's about $950, vs $1200 for the Air. That is a big price difference. And the machines look an awful lot alike.

But the Air has a faster processer, faster RAM, faster SSD and faster graphics (3000 series vs 4000 series Intel). The Asus has 1600x900 vs the Air's 1440x900.

The Air also comes bundled with software that's all written by Apple as first-class companions to OSX. The bundled software on PCs is almost universally mocked and either ignored or uninstalled.

Their Pro line is more expensive, yes. But the products I listed above make a large majority of Apple's sales and profits. And the people that actually have bought a Pro line seldom complain. They seldom think they didn't get value, that they didn't get their monies worth.

I get it, there are certain people who see a Mercedes as a car, like any other. They see, well, the Mercedes has a 2.5L engine, a Kia has a 2.5L engine. The Mercedes has 8 air bags, so does a Ford Focus. The Mercedes has.... you get my point. For those people, certainly, a Mercedes doesn't sound right for you.

But you're ignorant if you don't see the value others see in it, and it's not just vanity or shallow brand obsession. You may not weigh that value as heavily in your life as they do, but any honest person has to at least acknowledge it.