What Price Cool?
Interesting post on CNNMoney.
Microsoft (MSFT) raised the stakes in its anti-Apple (AAPL) PR offensive Thursday by issuing a 10-page “white paper” that puts a price tag on what it calls the “Apple tax” — the premium paid by consumers who choose Apple computers over those that run Microsoft Windows.
It’s a theme that was first raised last month by CEO Steve Ballmer, who told a Business Week-sponsored forum last month that Mac customers were paying an extra $500 to get the Apple logo on what is essentially the same hardware. And it has been repeated with slightly more subtlety every week since in a series of 60-second TV mini-dramas in which ordinary price-conscious Americans choose PCs over Macs. (The third is pasted below the fold; for more on the first two, see here and here.)
But the white paper, written by Endpoint Technologies Associates‘ Roger L. Kay and entitled “What Price Cool,” goes a few steps further. Not only does it slap a considerably higher tax on that Apple logo — $3,367 for two computers over five years — but it turns up the rhetorical temperature to something approaching the boiling point.
Full article here, and you can download the actual whitepaper here (yes, sorry, it’s in pdf format). It’s an interesting read, and Brandon LeBlanc gives his take on the Windows Experience Blog. See if you can do the math and come up with the difference.