1. Why are we still on the "authentication chip" business? No one anywhere has proven that there is any sort of authentication going on. We know that the cable needs circuitry in order to be able to be inserted in either direction and actually work, and pretty much everyone agrees that the chip in the cable is for…

I guess it depends how you phrase it. You could say that aside from the cameras, the Mini is the same as the iPad 2. Or, you could say that aside from the processor, the Mini is the same as the iPad 3.

That's a fucking creepy lead picture for this article. Why are the iPhones so big? Why are the people's feet made from paper maché?

"The screen may have a bigger physical size, but the lower pixel counts means you will see less stuff on the screen"

Sorry, one more example of why price matters more than margin %:

"all the new mini is is the ipad 2 scraps thrown in a smaller chassis to re coup costs no new features other than screen size(less)"

I really think you're overdoing it. The thing is $19 bucks. Percentages are less important than dollars in cases like this. Assuming that your educated research is correct, and the cable costs Apple $1.00 to make, an $18 profit might seem to be too high. But there are other factors to consider.

I think the dude being slapped is Robin...

Uh... You mean Robin? The boy wonder??

Dude, I totally agree with you on this. Six months from now, I'll probably buy a 3rd party cable as a spare, I just don't think it's a very smart idea to be a lab rat on this particular product.

Where can I download the chart that shows me what a fair vs. unfair markup is?

Also "If I don't see the value in the added markup over cost." means that it is overpriced for you, not overpriced.

Markup has absolutely nothing to do with value. If Apple was selling this cable for $100, and their cost to manufacture was $400 (losing $300 on every sale), would you happily pay $100 and talk about what an amazing deal it was? No, you wouldn't.

I appreciate that not everyone has money to just throw around on senseless things (neither do I), but the vast majority of people considering buying these cables are going to be iPhone owners. Considering that over the life of the 2 year contract, an iPhone (or any other smartphone) will end up costing a minimum of…

No, whether or not something sells is how "overpriced" is defined.

That tablet looks pretty nice! For whatever reason, I'd never seen a Sprint embedded device before that (and the iPads obviously)

What I mean by "supported for years to come" is that an Apple made cable wont be rendered useless by a software update at any time. Instead, it will be "supported for years to come." Outside of that, Apple takes a very customer-centric approach to product support, and I would not be surprised if they would replace a…

That's pretty interesting!

I'm not sure I understand the rage here. Pretty much every phone except the iPhone has the carrier logo on the front or back of the phone. Whether it's above the screen or below the screen doesn't change much as far as I'm concerned.

Perhaps a stupid question, but does Sprint actually support any tablets besides iPads?