Jeans cost less than $5 to produce in Asia. People all over the globe can easily purchase a pair of Jeans at the price of 50$ or more. Take that into account before flaming Apple. Remember the time they spend actually developing their products, they have no income from this specific product during that time, they basically live by innovating things which cost alot. If they didn't have Iphone, Ipod or MAC's they wouldn't earn a dime while developing this Ipad2, so ofcourse it will be a costly tool to make up for it.

Sure, one could say "oh my god, but they have so much profit on their other products" So what? Every product you purchase even in General Store's are sold ten times more expensive than their production cost. By percentage, Apple isn't even that bad compared to for example Jeans suppliers, that's like a 500% profit atleast.

The parts cost 336, then apple waves a magic wand and multi million dollar factories appear, and magical faeries fly in and put them all together.

I'm sure they make a nice profit but there are tons of expenses that start with R&D and end with them on store shelves.