I don't mind them charging say $50 "Apple premium" for the fact it's a proprietary board and needs firmware loading onto the flash but the multiplicative pricing is bullshit price gouging and nothing more.
And most (me included) would still end up buying the device anyways, maybe just with less storage than they want. And then need to upgrade earlier.
From Apple’s perspective, they seem to have figured it out.
And maybe the upgraded configurations somewhat subsidize the lower end configurations?
It's the beauty of having a product with no real competition in the market.
(BTW, I use Linux as my home and work OS But I'm a super geek and 20+ years full stack dev... not their target market, as I can handle the quirks and thousand papercuts of Linux)
So you agree with me.