[Logseman]

I don't understand how a pricing decision can be "dirty business": if the competition doesn't give added value to what the iPad can give, the competition will vanish. And if the iPad is something that the customers don't find anyhow worthy (or worthy enough to scratch their pockets), the price won't matter as it'll fail miserably. It's all a matter of perceived value. Value is subjective, indeed.

Why should Apple price their iPads in higher levels? . Apple aspires to be a market leader, not a follower, so it's logical that they want to win the initiative in pricing their products. (There are reasons why the prices should be higher, mainly because like every big business Apple externalises costs to the public, mainly the taxpayers, and their economies of scale are overvalued in reality, but that's another fully different topic)

What I understand as "dirty business" implies using the force of the state as to harass potential competitors or customers, as we see regularly with copyright and patents. Apple does its deal of it, too, but I don't see why their decision to price things as low as they want can be objected.