Apple sells Razors!
Apple is a hardware company, and much like the razor companies Apple understands that they must get you hooked on the Razor to sell you tons of Razor Blades. In Apple’s case the blades is the software.
Sure, all the software is free when you first buy an Apple, and quite reasonable afterwards also, but they do have a captive audience don’t they. With iTunes and the iPod, Apple is now selling us content to be followed by more software and faster hardware.
Unlike purchasing a PC, Apple does an excellent job of graphing their software together so they work seamlessly in tandem. So you naturally use iLife, and thusly you would have to upgrade at some point. Then they make sharing that self made content easy with a .Mac account for a small subscription so they also sell you a service.
Soon we will have an iPhone that will need a mobile OS X that will have to be upgraded also. And more content as we can start buying movies online. I expect Apple to start pushing Front Row as they attempt to take the Mac mini to the home theater. Then they can sell a subscription, probably through .Mac, that allows you to record shows from their guide.
This is all perfectly fine and expected; but I wanted to point out the obvious anyway so we can see the collateral potential of Apple selling more hardware.
Apple is a hardware company, and a fine one at that, but their software is cool also!
