Summary: Apple's marketing technique is similar to L’Oréal's, whose famous advertising slogan is "because I’m worth it"; Apple continues to serve as a barrier to GNU/Linux adoption

The FSFE's Hugo Roy, who was in touch with Steve Jobs regarding Ogg and patents, says that "Steve Jobs' business secret is pricing, not design." He has just found the following two articles:

Steve Jobs “never had any designs. He has not designed a single project”

[...]

In short, Jobs’ only contribution to the Macintosh project was to try unsuccessfully to cancel it.

 

How Apple plays the pricing game

Next time you're sitting at an airport bar and hear two businesspeople debate whether Apple is a technology or design company, chime in: "Nope. What Steve Jobs sells is pricing."

Pricing? You bet.

Jobs is a master of using pricing decoys, reference prices, bundling and obscurity to make you think his shiny aluminum toys are a good deal. Apple's Sept. 1 announcement of new products was a classic

The popular iPod Touch media player has been revamped at three price points - $229, $299, and $399 - all costing more than the iPhone, which does everything the Touch can plus make phone calls.

Apple has this new thing going on and it's called "Ping", which GigaOM claims to be stuck inside "Walled Garden" (once again this whole exclusivity factor):

As I discuss in a post at GigaOM Pro, Ping’s lack of integration with other social networks, or even with the web itself, is now its most compelling feature, at least from a strategic perspective.

Here is the effect on GNU/Linux users:

Users have to upgrade their iTunes installation to access Ping. Something that you cannot do on Linux.

Apple probably hates Linux so much that they intentionally integrated Ping in iTunes to block Linux users. Just kidding of course.

Apple hardly ever cares about supporting free platforms like BSD and GNU/Linux. That's just why Apple is far from a friend of "Open Source" and merely an exploiter. It also makes defective products in the same factories as all of its rivals (the branding is different and there is retaliation). But some go too far by blaming hypePod for what's generally just the fault of any portable media player (PMP). From The Age:

Pedestrian death rise blamed on iPods

The ''iPod zombie trance'' people get into when walking, driving or pedalling around listening to their mobile devices is being blamed for an increase in collisions and even deaths in Europe and the US.

The issue has been highlighted in Sydney by the death of a 46-year-old Glebe woman reportedly wearing headphones when she was knocked down and killed by an ambulance on Saturday night.

Well, that's just like blaming particular console makers for violent games and what these games may cause. In any case, Apple has many reasons to be distrusted and ignorant customers is not one of them. It's them who pay a premium only to feel better than fellow human beings (Apple sells them this arrogance) and exclude others. ⬆