Look you ask why other companies don't do this and the answer is simple, they can't get away with it. Every cable company on the planet would love to have invented the practice. I could even see this ad happening:

Hell, they already do this with DVR's. Why don't people just buy a TIVO or TV with cable card slot instead of paying Comcast $15 a month for a DVR? Because they don't think that way.

The real answer is that companies have figured out that most people won't sit down and do the accounting to figure out what the true amortized or depreciated cost of any item is over the long term. They instead just look at the advertised price and compare apples to cats.

American's don't think, "I have enough cash for that." They think, "I have enough credit for that." and could give two shits that the item costs them 200% more over 2 years. The only way to fix it is to make credit harder to get but then our economy would collapse (sooner) so.... yeah bring on the credit bubble baby!

Clearly he's search engine trolling.

My prediction is that eventually History will look like this:

You are creating a false dichotomy here by assuming that the only way to buy a car is to buy new. Today, any used car that was built 4 years ago that has a clean crash history and under 50,000 miles is a better car that could have been purchased for the same inflation adjusted price in 1974. There are many reasons for this, improve quality, higher safety standards, ect.

The reason new cars cost comparably more than 1974 cars is that cars have become so reliable that it is no longer profitable to sell cars at that price point. Also, auto companies figured out that they could lease cars to people and then sell them after 2 years at a lower price. The net effect of this is that the average buyer can get a car that's cost was partially subsidized by someone who leased it if they are willing to not have the newest model. If I buy a used 2012 car that has 50k miles on it that costs less per mile in maintenance than 1974 car with 0 miles on it and the 2012 car will reasonably go at least 180K I come out ahead as a consumer vs the 1974 car at the same price point.

If we stopped using coal for power generation tomorrow we wouldn't stop using coal. What do you think they use to add carbon to iron to make steel?

The question is how much coal will we use not can we stop using it. And if we can make electricity cheap without coal then it will lower the price of steel. Allowing us to build more stuff. Coal will suffer short term but long term it will survive just a little less profitable I would bet.

And yet according to this article and this wikipage we won't run out of Uranium or Thorium for reactors any time soon (30,000 to 60,000 years) if we take the unnecessary measures to recycle as much of the fuel as possible. If we are not off this rock exploiting the solar systems resources by 30,000 years our species is doomed anyway. (i.e. a big dumb rock will hit us eventually.) So what's your point.

Oh crap!

From a Military perspective how to do you keep someone from just shooting down your space based solar array. It's pretty hard to stop a high velocity missile from impacting and destroying a large stationary object this is pretty fragile. I guess you could arm the array with lasers, guns, missiles and such and hope to detect and change the vector of an approaching impactor but that sounds expensive and probably in violation of our no space based weapons treaties. Though the whole array could probably be turned into a weapon so it might be out just by itself. Not saying we shouldn't build one though just fun to think about that.

Exactly it's a lot harder and more expensive to "bribe" 50 different regulators. It's why things like this should be left to the States. But business and Washington bureaucrats would hate that. However, while there are departments that could be decentralized such as Education, or maybe to lesser extent FCC (Radio travels a good distance and the Military has a want to regulate it.) there are other regulators that you can't really do that with. I mean can you imagine how pissed Tennessee would be if we broke up the Nuclear Regulatory committee and then say Arkansas decides that it's OK to build a nuclear power plant with lax safety standards across the Mississippi from Memphis. Think about that one for a second, it sounds to me like it might clearly fall into the purview of the federal government at that point.

I'd vote for that since I never plan on working for the feds. However, how would this work for someone who works as a "contractor". What about retired military personnel. What's keeping congress from writing themselves out of the law. What about income from investments (i.e. dividends or capital gains.) vs earned income? Do benefits count for gross income in this law?

I feel like by the time congress is done "debating" such a law it will be toothless and full of pork. Why not just be blatant about this and let our elected representatives sack everyone and hire there own cronies at least they could set policy it would be obvious to everyone how corrupt everything really is. Just saying.

Really this has always been Apple's business model. When they first released the Apple Computer it was one of the first personal computers ever released for sale outside of a big corporate contract. That turned out to be very disruptive till IBM clones flooded the market. Then Apple floundered for a while till they grabbed onto a hit with the iPod. They have been riding the leading edge of the digitize and control the online distribution of most media since. Once the digitization of all media trend finishes they will have to move onto something else or die.

BTW the only things left to them in my opinion are:

1.) Live Television (Good luck with that. Its not so much that Apple can't make a good product here it's just that the cable companies/TV studios will never let them corner the market like they did with the music industry.)

2.) Replacing the iPod Mini with a watch that syncs to your iPhone. (That could be cool for a while but they will have to keep costs down IMHO. And with the Samsung Gear it's basically a me too at this point.)

3.) Pull a M$ and try to merge there desktop class and tablet class together. (That seems silly for the most part but might not blow up in their faces.)

4.) Virtual Reality - If apple can break into this field with a breakaway product before anyone else that's affordable and amazing they could be set for awhile.

Don't be sorry. I'm actually quite happy I didn't get in. Not only did my education at Western Michigan University cost me less money (i.e. less debt) but I make more money than my brother now. Also I met my wife at WMU. Getting rejected worked out great! :)

Also, I'm not opposed to them getting rid of legacy status I just know that realistically it probably won't happen since a lot of U of M's donor's are Alumni. Also, as DRJlaw outlined below the effect of legacy is much lower than the affect of race or even grades.

I got some data for you that you won't like. I come from a family with 5 kids. All 5 of us went to top high schools in the Detroit area. All 5 of us had over a 3.4 GPA and scored over at least 23 on our ACT's. Both my mother and father are University of Michigan Alumni with Bachelor and Master degrees. All 5 of us applied to U of M. Only one of us got in. Let me repeat that for you. Only one of us got accepted. It wasn't me either, my brother got in because he had the highest grades of all of us with a 3.7 GPA and a 29 on his ACT's. I was only a little behind him 3.6 GPA 26 ACT. Clearly alumni status didn't count that much.

Having grown up in Michigan, particularly Detroit, I actually agree with you. Michigan is extremely racist on some issues. For example growing up it was very well known that if a hard working middle class black couple moved from inner city Detroit into your nice white suburb it wouldn't be long before half of the white population moved to the next town over or further away because "OH MY GOD MY NEIGHBORHOOD IS BEING INVADED! THE PROPERTY VALUES ARE GOING TO DROP" creating a self fulfilling prophecy and destroying what used to be good neighborhoods and the hopes of hard working Americans who lifted themselves out of the ghetto.

This "White Flight" destroyed the Suburb I grew up in (Redford Township) and at the beginning for no reason at all. My parents still live there because well they paid their house off and didn't want to move so screw the market values. But I have seen how the area around them has decayed as more and more people left the town for Novi, Canton, and Livonia. To make matters worse, no one seems to learn from this at all either or rather they learn the wrong lesson. Livonia is now going through the same thing that Redford did and even the Grosse Pointes are starting to see it. It's sad and pathetic.

It's not all White Racism in that area either, I have been personally on the receiving end of resentment, hatred and harassment because of the color of my skin. I'm not bitter about it it's just the way things were. Detroit is a city that has never recovered from the race riots of the 60's and it is the real reason it has been falling apart. The seeds of this racism go all the way back to Henry Ford's hiring practices and it will probably be after I'm long dead before this ever improves.

However, the supreme court still made the right decision in that they ruled that the federal government does not have the power to regulate a state's right to implement or outlaw affirmative action. If the people of Michigan want the law changed they shouldn't cry to the feds they should stand up and vote it down. Now if Michigan had made a law that said Asians can't enter the following colleges (Insert list of top universities) then they should have struck that down. But that isn't what affirmative action is.

Affirmative action is giving preferential treatment to a "disadvantaged" group. I have failed to see how this is not a form of racism even if it is well intentioned. Is not classic racism giving the majority preferential treatment because we identify with them more? How is affirmative action different from that just not backwards in reason not result. The Michigan Universities should accept applicants based on merit alone end of story. Now lets get a law removing alumni status passed.

Exactly it takes me 15 minutes at a fast pace to walk across downtown Chicago from the train station to my office and that's less than 2 miles.