The much-overstated “Apple premium” largely reflects that they don’t compete in the lowest end of the PC/phone market. They’d be competing with BMW, not charging even more.

As a current owner of a BMW 5 series, buying anything non-electric for the price of an EV sounds ludicrous to me. The moment your warranty expires, BMW takes ownership of your wallet and never lets go, and there’s _a lot_ of expensive maintenance and repairs you need to do. I know they also make EVs, but just based on my current experience with their dealers buying anything from BMW would be insanity. Whoever overhauls the ownership experience will make a ton of money. In the meanwhile my next car will be a Tesla. My wife already has a Model Y, and in 3 years we paid $0 for maintenance and the car has been in the shop 0 times.

IOW Apple could easily charge their customary 20-30% margin and create fierce brand loyalty by just looking at whatever it is BMW is doing and doing the opposite in nearly every situation.

A friend used to drive an M3, so I’ve heard plenty about their pricing and how often parts had to be air-shipped.

My point was simply that I don’t think an Apple car would sell for a notably different price than other premium brands.

Agree, repairing a recent-gen out of warranty MacBook at Apple is nearly as expensive as servicing a car. Why wouldn't Apple want those margins from premium cars as well?

You probably haven’t had your car serviced in a while. My BMW is currently is at the dealer, to replace water pump and thermostat. The invoice is $4.5K. The winning strategy for a newcomer is not to charge for repairs, but to create a car that doesn’t need repairs or maintenance.

I have serviced a car, but not a BMW since I don't shit money.

If there's a spectrum where "Apple premium" is a 10, and lowest end of a market is a 1, where do you place these? https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MX572ZM/A/apple-mac-pro-w...