While I will admit that few other companies are any better, there is certainly nothing about Apple's hardware that makes it stand out in terms of quality. The iPad and iPhone are very pretty to look at (until they get scratched), but the components are the same asian-made lowest-bidder crap that everybody uses.
Who else machines housings out of single solid pieces of aluminium? It's not just about the electronics, it's the whole package.
Even the "magical" A4 processor was revealed as just a repackaged Samsung core.
That's not exactly newsworthy. the A4 processor has an ARM core, and it's manufactured by Samsung. The only bit of the die that is the same as the Samsung part is the core - and why would you expect that to be any different.
From their own phone-home API, as described and documented here. Granted they do not seem to have used it yet, and I apologize for this incorrectness in my previous post - they do, however, have a history of removing apps arbitrarily from the App store which is unacceptable in itself since the it is the only distribution channel for iOS software, effectively denying users control over what software to run.
It is this control that prevents the devices being riddled with malware - I think it's a price worth paying. To say there is no choice would be absurd given the number of apps in the App Store.
The suggestion that out of every hardware vendor only Apple does proper integration testing is laughable.
I don't think any other vendor has the degree of integration between the hardware and the OS that Apple does?
I can get a fully-featured PC with a bigger screen and more than sufficient battery life for much less than the price of an iPad, so yes, it's overpriced.
I can get potatoes for much less than the price of mangoes. That comparison is about as useful as yours!
I know you can get a fully-featured PC with a bigger screen and (just about) adequate battery life for less than the cost of the iPad. But then that isn't an iPad is it, so it's a pointless comparison...