Apple has almost always had a reputation of pricing their products quite a bit higher than their competition, and this premium cost is commonly referred to as the Apple Tax. And it can be traced as far back as the original iPod in 2001, which had a starting price of $399, or about $570 adjusted for inflation. And when compared to other hard drivebased music players that sold for around $200, the iPod’s price was staggering. And when the iPhone was released in 2007, one of its biggest criticisms was its price, coming in at $499, or about $600 today, and that was with a twoyear contract. And don’t forget the MacBook Air, which debuted with a $1,800 price tag. And that got you just 64GB of solid state storage. So the Apple tax is nothing new to longtime Apple users, but there has been an unusual trend upward in almost all Apple’s product categories over the past few years. And I think there’s more to that story than the Apple tax can account for.