Re: What's the actual *advantage* of not having an sd slot?

Your Name,

Are they ?   What do you think it costs to manufacture small batches of a
certain product ?

...

Depend on the shop's agreement with the manufacturer.

No, what doe it cost the *manufacturer* to create a small batch.  You know,
changing the machines to work with the differing device, printing and adding
different documentation, putting them into different boxes and all that.
in other words: the set-up costs.  The smaller the resulting batch, the
higher the devided setup-cost will be

The line after the above ("And than there is the risk involved in not
getting all of them sold.") deals with the stuff you where thinking of.

In the case of Apple, Samsung, and others, some of the shops are owned by
the manufacturer themselves.

So, all the risk is carried by the manufacturer.  They still have to
calculate the risk as a monetary value and put it ontop of the materials and
manufacturing price.

As for gouging, that only works when a single manufacturer is involved -
or you must believe that all the manufacturers all over the world

are colluding.
>
Not colluding as such, but once Apple does something, all the others
quickly follow.

True.   But its than also an argument againsts the OPs "they just do that to
make you pay more".

Samsung even has a habit of making fun of Apple for do it, only then for
Samsung to do exactly the same thing a few months later.

That is what seems to happen, but why does it happen ?    Perhaps because
(most of) the buyers only want the newest-of-the-newest bling, and the sales
numbers of the older model drops ?   IOW, the manufacturing companies follow
the customers wishes (opposing the OPs claims) ?

Yes, there are various reasons and excuses for doing something (these days
it is often the "green" environmental excuse), but it doesn't change the
fact that the customer is getting less for the same price.

I already mentioned in this thread that (big) companies are not altruistic.
Worse, they are there to make as much money for their investors as they can.
And yes, that means if a company can shorten an data cable by a decimeter or
two and save a *lot* of money that way than it will do so.

There is very little change between newer models of phone these days, so
removing the headphone jack, while yet again 'upgrading' the cameras
doesn't excuse them from not dropping the price for less functionality

You're forgetting all the other factors that make up the price.  Yes,
including* the "what a fool will still pay for it" I'm afraid.

* but not alone.  Prices of new materials/components and labour are not
static either.

That is the one of the supposed reasons ... but people have always told to
use the charger that came with the device, because using a "wrong" charger
can cause the batteries to catch fire.

And it was true.  Every company made its own chargers, with its own voltages
and connector configuration.  Just try and see what damage swapping the DC
voltage pins will do.

Suddenly there is no charger in the box, but there are still plenty of
"wrong" chargers out there that people are now using,

That will be quite hard to do, as now their connectors are, here in Europe,
all USB-C.  even when they do not deliver the minimum standard 500 mA they
will not destroy a device because of different pinning and always, even if
it goes slowly, charge the device.

The "breadbox" / "breadbin" was the orinigal C64 (and VIC20) computer
itself, although mainly after the thinner C64C was released as a way to
distinguish between the two. I've never heard the term used with the
Commodore disk drives.

I had both the origional C64 as well as their drive a while before the C64c
appeared.

When you're talking about separate plug-in devices liek external
disk drives,

Same as the C64 diskdrive.

there's nothing stopping a third-party company making a competing
compatible product (copyrights and patents allowing of course).

:-) Try to, as a small independant company, fight a big company.  Even when
you have done everything according to the rules they could bleed you to
death with harrassment lawsuits.

Personally I have never owned a mobile phone at all. :-p

Up until quite recently (a year or so) I did not own one either.  Now I do,
but its most always switched off (I've also got a landline), and only gets
switched on when I travel (by train) to visit a friend.

I have no need for one and it would be just yet another expense of
continually paying for the plan fees

I do not /need/ cheescake either, but I'm paying for it anyway - and enjoy
eating it. :-)

I'm on a E4,- per month plan, and don't have a problem with it (low voice
and SMS usage).

Though as a hobby-programmer I would like to be able to write my own apps
for it - without getting roped in by Google.  My last attempt failed because
directly after the install the programming environment needed to download
additional stuff, which aborted with a "can't find it" (whatever "it" was)
error message. :-(

Regards,
Rudy Wieser