I'm surprised nobody has mentioned this... 1585

incorrect. apple engineers their boards, dell does not, they also have more pull with Intel than a dell does since they work closer together on more advanced projects. intel has over 1000 employees working on Mac stuff, Dell, less than 100. Apple also has the lower cost advantage since it owns the OS, whereas dell has to pay MS every time it sells a machine. Apple will be the lowest cost machine from here on out. Will apple pbutt that on to customers? probably not, but it really doesn't matter.

Dell doesn't have any cost advantage over Apple for parts, Apple builds less items, so it builds "more" of the same designs, Dell doesn't do this, they have 10,000's of parts when they should have only a few 1,000. they are poorly managed that's all. DeLL sells lower because they don't do any engineering, has no software, has no dealer or sales channel, and has temporarily gone after marketshare forgetting that customers won't stay long with an unsupportable business model. it's just a (big) mom and pop shop, they will be a shell of themselves in just 10 years. look at gateway, it's dell in 5 years, apple will come on just too strong for them to compete.

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