Not overpriced. Nobody could come close to the price of the Macbook Air with fully equivalent hardware, for example, and today's MBP release is the same. When competitors try to meet the specs across the board, without any major compromises, they cost 20% more.
The overpriced thing is a decade old, and used to be justified as a brand positioning (pay more for quality build).
Now, Apple's supply chain lets them offer even higher build quality but at a discount to inferior products.
Nonsense. Comparing a Lenovo X220 with equivalent specs, it comes out slightly cheaper on the Lenovo side. There are minor differences on both sides (eg thunderbolt versus replaceable battery) but going for SSD, same RAM, same CPU, similar screen size, the Lenovo comes out at $1216 and the Mac Air at $1349 (in Australia).
You're exactly right, bu those downvoting you don't want to admit it. It's why I was careful to specify all specs, no compromises. The other corners typically cut are screen quality, battery life (without hauling around still more weight as extras), and backlit keyboard.
I agree with you the 20% weight difference without the other compromises is remarkable.
You're probably being downmodded because half a pound of weight is not a major feature, but you're trying to shoehorn it into a trump card. For me, the trackpoint mouse is a major feature which leaves the Air dead in the water, but it's really a minor feature between the two.
Same as all the extras that the X220 has over the Air, like card slots, swappable batteries, and a perimeter that doesn't cut into your hand. And vice versa. These things are all minor differences. The Thinkpad laptops are also as tough as the Apple laptops, if not tougher - despite looking like a normal laptop, they survive more military tests than 'hardened' brand laptops.
The short version is simply that the Lenovo X-series and the Apple Airs are equivalent laptops at the same price point - the Air is not 'better' for 'less' than the 'inferior' product.
It may sound odd, but last year I had a 13" MBP (4.5 lbs), and its weight really bothered me. I actually swapped it for a mac mini that I carried to and from work each day, hooking it up to a monitor, keyboard and mouse at each place just because it was a bit lighter.
The only I'd want an air over a pro is the weight. As far as the X220 is concerned, weight would be my number #2 complaint after the OS. The lack of an Apple-level quality trackpad might be #3. The hundred bucks does matter, but honestly when you consider how many hours you, or at least I, spend on a computer, the price is almost negligible compared to improvements in user-experience or efficiency.
The trick to your claim is "fully equivalent hardware". I just bought a System76 laptop after a lifetime of using macs exclusively, and there was just no contest on price. To get a roughly equivalent machine from Apple would have cost nearly twice as much. Yes, that would have included a few nifty little things here and there that simply weren't available for the machine I got, just as my machine has some things I couldn't have gotten on a mac.
But to claim that Apple is competitive on price is just absurd. They're very competitive on hardware/software integration, on usability, an aesthetics, on stability. But not on price.
You're right in terms of the Air; it's a great deal for how well it's built. Almost every single other computer they offer is demonstrably overpriced based on specs.
The overpriced thing is a decade old, and used to be justified as a brand positioning (pay more for quality build).
Now, Apple's supply chain lets them offer even higher build quality but at a discount to inferior products.