Mac prices: value or scam?

People on this group often discuss about Macs' prices. Some find it's high and would like to run OS X on a standard PC. Some others say it's "value". What is it exactly?

In 2006(1), Steve Jobs received some $650 millions in stock options. Hey, not bad. He's getting close to adding a new billion every year.

(1) Latest figures, which fuelled quite an uproar. I wonder if we'll ever get 2007's.

How much does Steve Ballmer get in comparision?

"Ballmer's salary was up slightly, to $620,000, from $616,667 the year before. Overall, his combined salary and bonus of $1.27 million for fiscal 2007 was up 31 percent from fiscal 2006. Ballmer still owns more than 4 percent of the company, according to the filing, and he doesn't take stock options or stock awards as part of his compensation."

<http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/122296.asp?source=rss>

So, in order to give Jobs his hundreds of millions a year, Apple shareholders expect money to be pouring in. And it does!

Dell Profitability:

Profit Margin (ttm): 4.82%
Operating Margin (ttm): 5.91%


Apple Profitability:
Profit Margin (ttm): 15.13%
Operating Margin (ttm): 19.28%

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=AAPL

Apple's profit margins are more than 3 times higher than Dell's!

So, since Dell sells at a decent price, where do the shareholders get their money from? Dells sells more than Apple:

Dell Income Statement:
Revenue (ttm): 61.13B

Apple Income Statement:
Revenue (ttm): 28.75B

In the end, revenue per share is pretty close:

Dell revenue pershare: 27.5

Apple revenue per share: 32.919

That's why for $600 less than a Mac Pro, you can get an HP computer(1) with a QuadCore processor, a better video-*TV* card, 4 GB RAM, a SATA 750 GB HD, 1033 MHz bus, AND a *Blue-Ray* writer, and that's no dumb 16x double-layer SuperRidiculousDrive.

(1) I checked HP, but Dell has similar offers. They're competing, see what I mean?

That's what some Mac users call value. To them, scam is a value.
.

Relevant Pages

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