Apple is selling $700 wheels.

So, you might have seen this before. Apple is selling a set of 4 wheels for their Mac Pro, priced at $699 + tax. The Mac Pro is Apple’s power device, aimed at their most demanding high-end users. Now, this does not refer to a person who is buying a computer to finish some class assignments, write a few papers, nor casually surf through YouTube videos. And coming in at a base price of just under $6,000, the average consumer is definitely not purchasing the Mac Pro. With this in mind, it can be seen that Apple has designed this device for their professional clients and production driven ‘prosumers’ who require a sophisticated and powerful set up at their workstations. So, a great question is, why would these pros need wheels for their computers? Especially if it needs to be plugged into a wall and would just be placed desk all day. There are many, many reasons that we can talk about to show that this does not make sense, especially with the price tag. But, if we think about it, this actually makes sense for Apple.

The first reason that persons might think of is that maybe Apple’s production cost for the wheels and the Mac Pro is extremely high, while the volume being sold is extremely low. Thus, they need to charge an extraordinarily high price to make a profit. Although this could seem reasonable, it probably is not true. Companies with a large product base tend to not make a profit on every single product that they make. Rather, they subsidize the losses that they incur from their less successful products with the surpluses that they gain from their more successful products, especially if they have a wide range of items at multiple price points. Such is the case with Apple and its product line. If a pro-consumer really needed a powerful device that can be moved around the office, they would have probably just purchased a maxed-out $7,000 MacBook Pro laptop. So then why the wheels?

Well, Apple is like a luxury brand within the tech industry. Whether you’re a fan of the company or not, most persons can agree that Apple makes products which seem very premium, and they just work. Within various industries, luxury is often used as a synonym for quality. That luxury also has a lot to do with the feeling that you get after purchasing something; wear $400,000 Dolce and Gabbana sunglasses and you feel like a baller. Consumers often implicitly equate things such as packaging, advertisements, and price to the quality of an item. We tend to think that a higher price means higher quality, even if items are identical and the lower priced item would be a better deal. Therefore, luxury brands try to keep up this perceived image of high quality through high prices. The tech industry is extremely competitive though, and high prices do not automatically make a company a luxury brand. Companies like OnePlus and Samsung are throwing their best at Apple, providing quality substitute products to consumers at sometimes even half the cost of Apple’s entry-level device. But Apple has a proven track record of successful products, and this allows them to uniquely operate within the competitive space. Additionally, since many of their items are high priced, customers feel like they are getting an outstanding deal when they release cheaper items. Take for instance the $400 2020 iPhone SE; this phone has been advertised as one of the best deals that the recent smartphone industry has seen. It means that Apple has the ability to choose which market they want to play in, and they know that they will be able to attract customers regardless of the price point. This is why we see $1,400 iPhones, $1,700 iPads, and $700 wheels. But $700 wheels?

Here’s the thing, many luxury brands are known for producing items which are so high priced that consumers are not even upset when they cannot afford them. Rather, these products create talking points for persons to gather and discuss why the pricing makes no sense and wonder who could possibly be buying these items. People create memes and Reddit threads to make fun of the items. The constant discussion creates free advertising for the companies, not just for the product at hand. Since the announcement of the Apple wheels, many articles (including this one now) have been published discussing why would anyone want wheels, or even showing that the Twitter community is roasting Apple for this product. But, many of those articles also provide some background on Apple, describe related Apple products, give a detailed breakdown of other devices that you can purchase from Apple which would cost the same (or even less), and cause Apple to be trending within the media for a period time. Maybe you did not even know about these wheels before, and now you are shocked that they cost $700. Because of this, you go to Apple’s website to see whether I meant $7 instead. You see one of Apple’s fancy iPad commercials about how your next computer is not a computer. You don’t really know what that means, but you’re hooked. All of a sudden, you have an iPad Pro, Apple pencil, magic keyboard, and AirPods Pro in your shopping cart, totaled at about $1,700. You don’t even remember that you only went to the website to see the price of the wheels. But that does not matter anymore because you’re about to become an Apple prosumer. They say that any press is good press, and that’s certainly the case with these wheels.

So, although it is probably correct to think that $700 for 4 wheels is outrageous, would you have gotten them for $4 as an average consumer? If you have purchased the wheels, congratulations. But if you haven’t, don’t worry, they were not made to be a high selling item. Chances are no one is really going to purchase these wheels; they don’t even have locks to prevent them from rolling away. The release of the Mac Pro’s wheels was Apple’s way of drawing customers to their other, more affordable devices, and they have succeeded.