I find the idea of these guys being the federal CIO/CTO after the next presidential election laughable.

At the risk of appearing to support this ridiculous claim of Fox:

They're going to the Supreme Court claiming that assemblage of a program with interspersed commercials is a creative work?

Andy Warhol, Richard Hamilton, Eduardo Paolozzi, and other pop artists would wholeheartedly say yes.

Like it or not, Apple is in the same business as Alienware. Bundling performance components and then inflating the price until it ceases to be a good value.

I sure hope so. They both sell hardware and they have a core market that they spend a lot of money trying to keep satisfied. Alienware sort of went down hill since their acquisition by Dell. It's a shame since their earlier machines were pretty nice.

Similarly, if you actually spend the same amount of money on PC components building one as you spent on a pre-assembled Apple, every aspect of the machine will be superior.

What is your point? I can and have spent money on "superior" parts and assembled a PC. Unfortunately the savings didn't materialize. Not to mention, I'm no longer in college and my time is far too valuable assembling a desktop. If I consider the amount of money that I am being paid for my time, I could have easily purchased several Mac Pros. I only need one therefore I just purchase one already assembled.

I'll take the S2000 thank you.

You can have the S2000. It screams "I have a small penis" a little too loudly for my taste. I prefer the V6 Accord Sports Coupe. It is plenty sporty for me, and it goes plenty fast to shave some time off of my long commute. The gas milage is great and I have trunk space to carry my equipment. Not to mention the reliability if renown and it holds its resale value. Also my car is still in production and has about 30 more hp.

I guess in a way you've proven my point. You seemed obsessed with outward appearance, while I look at the entire package. Sure I can save some money and purchase a computer that has a very thin veneer of being similar to an Apple, but I'll regret it when problems begin to arise (and they will). So for the moment Apple meets my demands and the fact that the machines have eye pleasing designs is just a bonus.

I do agree with you that the motherboards are fabricated by the same people who make the motherboards for Dell and others. However, the motherboards are made to Apple's specifications just like Dell specifies their motherboard designs. I also agree that the individual components are manufactured by third-party vendors that sell to just about everybody.

The key difference between the brands is that Apple wants quality to be associated with their branding and will make design choices and parts selections that ensure that they keep their image. They charge a premium for their equipment so they have enough margin to chose quality over economy.

Dell, on the other hand, wants to offer the most bang for the buck. They are competing against beige box assemblers and make design choices that allows them to offer a reasonably powerful machine at very low cost. Their margins are small so they do cut corners to keep the price low. For the average hobbyist and home user that uses Windows, Dell makes a nice machine. The average user will upgrade to a newer machine in about 3 years and the Dell will *probably* last long enough until a Windows game/program/operating system comes out that will require a new computer anyway.

I prefer Apple, but I do purchase and use both brands (non-Apple usually equals Dell), however lately I've been buying Supermicro instead of Dell. I have powerpc Apples that are still functioning well, and the Apple laptops (even the white plastic MacBooks) are still in use. The Dell laptops haven't faired so well. The Desktop machines are still mostly working, but most of the cheap ass parts were replaced (I believe the chassis and the motherboard are the only original equipment). The laptops however are crap. The new Dells with the smart card reader looks promising (we purchased 5) and we hope they do better than the other Dells.

Overall the Apple branded equipment are better made. I had a couple of lemons that Apple gladly swapped out and the replacements have been trouble free.

Long story - short. Your milage may vary but to say there's little difference between Dell and Apple branded computers is pretty naive.

Excuse me if I find your anecdotal evidence lacking credibility. I have a large number of Mac where I work and they are abused quite regularly. I haven't had these problems you speak of. I do like the USB keyboards from Dell which I use in the server room. I have plenty of spares since the keyboards seem to outlast the Dell computers themselves.

These alarmist act like we can't do the same thing now with Dropbox and not be tied to a particular OS.

I use my dropbox account way more than my iCloud.

Look at China... In fact it seems to be a net benefit.

Everything seems like a benefit when you have a totalitarian government telling you that it is a benefit.

Of course when the only direction your economy can go is up, anything can become a benefit. Do you honestly believe that workers would put up with half the crap that they do if there were other options for them?

The submitter said intellectual property not patents or copyrights. Therefore trademarks would fall into the 5 year argument. This is an example of a question being too vague.

If first sale doctrine applies, then the EULA of a retail product that is not presented until after the sale is complete has no legal force.

Except for the minor detail about the Apple hardware requirement being presented to the buyer prior to sale.

...which sounds a lot like Apple's problem and not anyone else's. I know what you're getting at, but I don't believe that's a justifiable defense of Apple. For many months after launch, Sony and Microsoft subsidized the price of their gaming consoles with the expectation that buyers would purchase other high-margin games and peripherals to make up the difference. Well, some people used their consoles for media centers or integrated them into computing clusters. In those cases, Sony/MS lost on those sales. Did the buyers do anything wrong? No: they just took advantage of a favorable price point.

While it is an interesting point, I can't seem to reconcile it against the following:

• On console systems, the hardware is being sold with the expectation that the end-user will purchase games. There is no legal requirement for the end-user to purchase a game. In Apple's case, the software is being sold with the expectation that the end-user will run it on Apple hardware. In this case, there is a legal requirement to own Apple hardware. It's is specified within the EULA and the software is sold as an upgrade to an existing and qualified copy of its predecessor.
• Items that are sold for the expressed purpose of modifying the behavior of game consoles (e.g. mod-chips) have faced legal scrutiny.