Apple. Beautifully overpriced. Courageously fragile. Securing your children's data while extracting your wallet with surgical precision since 1976.
* Starting at $1,299. Stand, wheels, cable, and dignity sold separately.
The Mac Pro starts at $6,999. For that price, you'd reasonably assume it could, at minimum, roll. You would be wrong.
Apple sells the "Mac Pro Wheels Kit" — four caster wheels and two handles — as a $699 optional accessory. That's $174.75 per wheel. A wheel. A round piece of plastic on an axle.
For context: a decent office chair with five wheels costs around $80. You could buy eight entire office chairs for the price of Apple's four wheels. The Mac Pro itself has no way to attach third-party wheels. Apple made sure of that.
When journalists asked about it, Apple said it was "professional-grade." The wheels do not have motors. They do not connect to Wi-Fi. They roll. They cost $699.
Apple has convinced an entire generation of parents that iPhones are the "safe" choice for children. Let's look at what "safe" actually means in Cupertino.
For the price of a used car, you'd expect bulletproof quality. Apple's track record tells a different story.
Apple redesigned the MacBook keyboard to be thinner. The result: a keyboard so fragile that a single speck of dust could cause keys to stop working or repeat uncontrollably. It affected millions of laptops. Apple denied the problem for years, then quietly replaced them via a repair program they never admitted was a recall.
Class action settledThe iPhone 6 Plus would bend — permanently — simply from being carried in a front pocket. Not dropped. Not sat on. Just carried. Apple's response: demonstrated the bend required 70 lbs of pressure. Consumer Reports showed it bent at 35 lbs. Whose jeans apply 35 lbs to their phone? Everyone's.
Design defect deniedThe iPhone 4 would drop calls if you held it in your left hand — the natural way most humans hold phones. Signal dropped because your hand covered the antenna. Steve Jobs' solution at a press conference: "Avoid holding it in that way." Apple eventually gave out free bumper cases.
Steve said hold it differentlyApple replaced Google Maps with their own app. The app directed drivers onto airport runways, placed cities in the ocean, and gave walking directions through rivers. The CEO of Australia's Victorian police force issued a public safety warning. Tim Cook apologized and recommended people use Google Maps — Apple's competitor.
CEO publicly apologizedApple's tiny tracking device — marketed for finding keys — became a stalking tool almost immediately. Abusers slipped them into victims' bags and cars. Apple's anti-stalking alerts were delayed, quiet, and on the stalker's phone. Domestic violence organizations reported a surge of cases. Apple updated the software. The problem continues.
Ongoing legal challengesApple admitted they had been slowing down iPhones with aging batteries via silent software updates — without telling users. The stated reason: prevent unexpected shutdowns. The observed effect: phones felt broken, people bought new ones. Apple paid $500M in settlement. Individual users received roughly $25 each.
$500M settlementApple uses software "parts pairing" to ensure that even genuine Apple replacement parts — screens, batteries, cameras — will trigger error warnings unless paired by Apple's system. A working Apple battery installed by a third-party shop will show "Service Recommended." Apple has fought right-to-repair legislation in states across the US.
Lobbied against your rightsEvery app on your iPhone pays Apple 30% of subscription revenue and in-app purchases. That cost is passed directly to you. Spotify costs more on iOS than on Android because of Apple's cut. Epic sued. Netflix quietly removed the ability to subscribe in-app. Apple earned $85 billion in "Services" revenue in 2023. You paid for it.
Under EU antitrust investigationA bug in FaceTime allowed callers to hear audio from the recipient's phone before the call was accepted — effectively eavesdropping on people who hadn't picked up yet. A teenager discovered it. Apple was warned. They disabled Group FaceTime for a week, fixed it quietly, and moved on. This is the "most secure" platform.
Bug went unfixed for daysA brief and incomplete history of Apple's greatest moments.
Apple's marketing is world-class. Their reality is a different product entirely.
Let's tally what a basic Apple setup actually costs. This is not the high-end. This is the minimum viable Apple life.
One person. One computer. One phone. The basics. Priced as of 2024.
At some point, "it just works" has to mean more than "it just takes your money." You have choices. Excellent ones.
Android — $0 Polishing Cloth Linux — Your Computer, Your Rules Fairphone — Actually Repairable* These are real alternatives. We recommend researching them. We are not sponsored. We just hate $699 wheels.