[JJ_SO]

There was once a prototype of a Leica designed by Jon Ives. Also, Leica collaborates with Panasonic already which is no cheap brand in the PC market. A lot of "Toughbooks", ruggedized laptops, comes from them as well as some pretty good bridge cameras. As for the price: Apple still maintains a level of usability before others get it. Sure, they're bleeding money. But the point is: Which manufacturer won't like to see himself in the position of Apple and do exactly the same? Prices up, service between not too bad and really great - I am an Apple customer, sometimes disappointed and other times quite surprised by a generous solution. I think, not many people would buy an Apple at half the price, suspecting there's something spooky with it.

 

Collapsing market? It would explode, if Apple jumps in with a cool product. Trouble is, consumers like us don't want so much more functions. Reading feature lists from higher grade bridge cameras, compact or mirrorless give me headaches. It's not "bring more features in" it's "use these things with less obstacles". Apple always shone when it came to usability. They took a normal concept idea like a tablet, an all-in-one PC, a mobile phone and made something out of it easy to use, expensive, but affordable and - sustainable. I'm typing this on a 6 year old iMac, still able to cope with 40 MB raws or 200 MB tiffs. Over the years the price got from expensive to reasonable. Something I'd like to see more of that in the camera market.