Re: Rational decisions
Once people have a certain amount of disposable income, their buying choices cease to be strictly economic. What they don't consider is that each sub-optimal buying decision reduces their disposable income until they can no longer avoid strict economic decisions.
Also, people in the new middle class (i.e. people who now have disposable income) are likely to be financially unsophisticated; there were a lot of people who failed to notice that bit about investments going down as well as up. Thus, their prediction of their economic status in future is likely to be optimistic to say the least.
The trick is to get to where you can milk this for all it is worth, and Apple have achieved this.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
