In the wake of statements from Apple CEO Tim Cook that the company seriously considers ways to lower prices, they did just that. In an unexpected move on Tuesday, Apple cut the price of the entry-level 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display by $200, to $1,499. The 15-inch version remains at $2,199, but gains a more powerful processor, with the high-end $2,799 version receiving 16GB of RAM. That used to be a $200 option.

While it’s not unusual for Apple to beef up a Mac over time for the same price, actually making it cheaper doesn’t happen very often. Sometimes a price cut can really boost sales. But a substantial price change didn’t do much for the Power Mac G4 Cube, which expired in 2001, weeks after Steve Jobs denied reports that this model would be discontinued. A few years ago, Apple rejiggered the MacBook Air, not known as an especially big seller, into a thinner, lighter product that started at $999. Sales really took off, and Intel established an Ultrabook platform spec to get PC makers to compete; a move that failed, by the way.

With the MacBooks, I suspect Apple is merely taking advantage of the lower cost of production to cut prices on certain models or configurations. I expect Apple wants to make the Retina display standard across the lineup, but the price for those higher resolution flat panels makes this difficult for now. But as the costs of raw materials comes down, that’s going to change. I am also hopeful that prices for solid state memory will also decrease enough so Apple can pump larger quantities into MacBooks for the same price, or make them cheaper as well. As the single largest consumer of flash memory on the planet, Apple is in a position to control the direction of the industry. Wouldn’t it be nice of an SSD could be purchased in large storage capacities, say 1TB and higher, for not much more than traditional mechanical hard drives?

Now when you look over Tim Cook’s comments at this week’s presentation before Goldman Sachs, you get the strong impression he is quite sensitive to pricing questions. He made a big deal of the fact that the entry-level iPhone 4 is free with a two-year contract, and that this offer was so popular that Apple couldn’t build enough to satisfy demand. He reminded us how the iPod started at $399, but you can buy one today with similar storage capacity for $49. At the same time, Cook repeated the Apple mantra that they won’t build junk, and the iPod shuffle surely isn’t junk.

Perhaps Cook has given us a subtle hint to the arrival of more lower cost gear from Apple in the years to come. Maybe this is a tacit admission, for example, that a new entry-level iPhone is under development. Don’t forget that the iPhone 4, without a contract, is still over $400, but you can get an unlocked Google Nexus 4, with the same 8GB storage, for $299. If Apple could beat or exceed that price, the presumed iPhone mini or nano could be a huge success, but not just for people who cannot afford one of the existing models without a subsidy. And, once again, it doesn’t have to be cheaply made.

One possibility is that the rumored iWatch could be the key to building a cheaper iPhone-type gadget. An iWatch could be available with basic phone functionality, the storage capacity of an iPod shuffle and perhaps Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. But some of the other iPhone hardware features would be absent. Having a much smaller screen would help reduce the costs of production, and power requirements. Imagine one of these for, say, $199. I’d toss my chronograph in a heartbeat.

However, claims that Apple is simply leaving lots of money on the table, or potential market share growth, by not building cheap gear won’t persuade Cook and his team. Apple never played the cheap PC game through all the years where sales of Windows computers totaled hundreds of millions of units, while Apple was lucky to sell a few million copies.

They could have gotten a much higher market share, but they didn’t move in that direction, any more than they expect to compete with $199 tablets. That’s not Apple’s game, obviously. If the company began to concentrate on selling as many units as possible in as many markets as possible without regard to making a difference in the market, and not earning huge profits on every sale, it would be the beginning of the end.

In the meantime, if this week’s unannounced move is an example, you will see more value-added changes to existing products over time. Some prices may come down to take advantage of lower component costs, while some products will simply get refreshes to provide more performance, and perhaps more storage capacity. Consider the 128GB iPad, which makes the tablet more usable in a business environment. That new model was clearly conceived with careful planning, although it’s a costly beast as far as tablets go (outside of the Surface Pro). But as the price of solid state storage declines, expect greater capacities for the same price across the board in the rest of the iPad lineup, not to mention the iPhone and even the iPod.

Over the years, so-called media pundits and financial analysts have suggested that Apple buy this company or that company. Usually, it’s a company that, independently, hasn’t demonstrated much in the way of financial success, but would seem to offer technology that Apple needs, or should need. One example is TiVO, which makes DVRs, but earns more revenue for licensing their technologies to the cable and satellite industry, which includes the ability to record one show while watching another.

In the real world, Apple buys up small companies that have developed technology that suits the company’s future product and marketing directions. So they bought Siri, and you all know how that purchase ended up. Apple’s chip design expertise also came from acquisitions of small companies.

Well, I was wondering, just casually you understand, whether Android in the hands of Google yields the best prospects for the future of the platform. To Google, everything they do is focused on building ad revenue. Android smartphones simply provide more eyeballs for their targeted ads. The OS is given away freely to handset makers who sign a Google contract. In turn, those companies — and the carriers who sell their gear — live in relative freedom to rejigger the OS with custom apps, junkware…whatever. This state of affairs creates platform fragmentation, and it also means that most users of Android gear do not receive critical software updates, or any software updates.

You may find that your Android smartphone doesn’t even set Google as the default search engine. The AT&T version of the Samsung Galaxy S3 I’m currently reviewing came with Yahoo! set as the default Internet browser’s home page, and Verizon Wireless sells Android handsets configured with Microsoft’s Bing, although you can change it if you like. Most customers never bother.

Now Android isn’t actually free to handset makers. Microsoft has demanded license fees of a reported $5 or more per handset to license certain patents. While the validity of those patents, and whether they apply to the Android OS, has apparently never been tested in court, the handset makers pay up.

To Google, Android is not a huge money maker. Samsung, however, is the world’s largest Android licensee, and the largest handset maker in the world. Yes, Apple currently outsells Samsung in the U.S., and, yes, Samsung is spreading the sales totals across dozens of different models, from cheap feature phones, to the most expensive Galaxy smartphones.

When it comes to profits, Apple gets most of the benefits courtesy of the iPhone, Samsung is second and the rest — not so much!

Samsung’s expertise has always been to follow a technology leader with a similar product, often at a somewhat lower price. This “follow the leader” approach has worked, building a company that delivers good to excellent products in many categories, from home appliances, to smartphones, audio gear, and TV sets. They even fabricate chips that are used in their own products, and are sourced by Apple and other hardware makers.

That Samsung licenses Android is simple. Their own efforts to build a mobile OS have fallen short. Whatever you think of Android, and how it compares to the iOS, it is undeniably successful. My personal encounters with Android convey the strong impression that I’m revisiting the Mac versus Windows universe; the traditional Windows and not that misbegotten Windows 8 with the silly tiles and complicated gestures.

So why should Samsung buy Android, and why should Google sell it to them? Well, one reason not to consider such an acquisition is that Samsung is getting the OS free, and there do not appear to be any impediments to building successful smartphones and tablets. Since Google owns Motorola Mobility, yet another handset maker, it would appear they would have no incentive to sell off Android.

But if Samsung were to acquire Android, the purchase price would amount to billions of dollars, far more than the platform will deliver to Google for a number of years. It’s also possible such a purchase would include paid licenses to certain Google technologies, meaning the company would receive payments from Samsung until some new platform or handset design scheme takes over.

Samsung’s benefit is that they get Android all to themselves, after existing licenses go elsewhere. They would honor current contracts but, as new Android versions are released, tighten the terms so nobody will apply. In one fell swoop, Samsung slays the competition, except for Apple of course. Sure, the rest of the companies, such as HTC and LG, will probably consider moving to Windows Phone or attempt to roll their own. They might even try to license the BlackBerry OS, and that might be feasible if the new BlackBerry handsets don’t take off in a big way.

All right, the real question is whether Samsung would consider such a move and, in fact, whether they have made any attempt to convince Google to accept such a transaction. I expect the answer is no, even though, assuming the Google Play Store is included, it would place Samsung in the same business as Apple, because they would be controlling the entire user experience.

But it’s also true that, aside from Apple and Samsung, mobile handset makers aren’t rolling in the profits. Samsung has a strong motive to continue to trounce their direct competition, and gain even a larger leg up in the war against Apple. Buying Android — having it all to themselves — might make sense from a strategic point of view. The whole idea, however, probably has no more credibility than most of the suggestions of what companies Apple should buy up next.

The latest rumor of a possible market disruption about Apple is all about a…wrist watch? As crazy as it may seem, it’s not as if the world of fiction hasn’t described a precedent for such a gadget? Or the world of comics, such as the famous wrist radio used by detective Dick Tracy, or even Inspector Gadget.

While the concept of a wrist-based communications device may have seemed appropriate for a future world, Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek, didn’t see fit to outfit the crew of the 23rd century Enterprise with them. Instead, they used flip phones, called “communicators.” It also created somewhat of an awkward situation if a member of the crew left a communicator or phaser in the hands of a primitive civilization. Do you recall what happened when Ensign Chekhov fled his 20th century military captors in “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home”? Yes, he left his gear behind.

Well, this rumor was inevitable, and it’s been around here and there in various forms for a while. With no confirmation yet whether Apple is going to build a large screen TV set to take over your living room, or master bedroom, there’s a story that we may soon see an iOS-powered iWatch. If you can stop laughing for a moment, here’s the deal: There are now published reports in The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal that appear to take this report seriously. It appears that Corning, developer of Gorilla Glass, which is used on the iPhone and many other smartphones, has perfected the sort of bendable glass that would be ideal for a form-fitting smart wristwatch. Apple simply adores exotic technologies, although that may sometimes be taken to extremes. Consider the problems in building the new iMac and getting them into the hands of eager customers.

But form is only a part of the picture, and certainly an iWatch will look just great, if you check out some of the mockups. One showed a virtually transparent face, with an LCD display that resembles a miniaturized iPhone screen. For such a design scheme to work, the electronic guts would probably have to be embedded in the strap, which limits your choices, I suppose. But Apple could provide different colors, and choices of stainless steel or leather, for example. I’m not worried about the appearance; I’m more interested in the function. Would this be a true communications device, with phone and most functions driven by Siri? A smaller screen would limit the touch options, so don’t expect to type more than a few words on one of those gadgets if it had a touch keyboard. But with a carefully focused set of key functions, it could become a really hot product, assuming it was reasonably affordable, though the carrier contract would take care of that.

An iWatch with the requisite two-year contract could, I suppose be offered free with, say, 4GB of storage. I’m not thinking of such a device as necessarily a repository of your digital content, but more as a communications device, emphasizing FaceTime video chats above voice, though there’s no reason that Skype couldn’t be included. iCloud would take care of your music and videos.

Although there has been talk of an iWatch or similar device for years — and other companies are working on tricked out wristwatches too — this is a product category that doesn’t seem to get a lot of attention, but it should. I’ve always had a wristwatch of some sort, usually a chronograph or something with lots of dials and obscure functions — and cheap. But the question is how Apple might overturn that venerable industry with a next-generation communications device.

Actually, I find the concept intriguing. There’s even a report that Foxconn is now involved in developing techniques to power and assemble such a device, which is to be expected even if it’s only a prototype.

But it’s also a good time to return to the real world, such as it is. Apple is no doubt developing all sorts of fascinating product concepts that may or may not make it to market. There is that long-rumored smart TV set, a spruced up Apple TV set top box, and a host of other ideas that will keep the rumor purveyors endlessly busy.

When it comes to a TV set, even if it’s little more than a Siri-driven overgrown iPad of some sort, I remain highly skeptical. Most of the things such a set could do to fix the problems that affect existing gear can be done with the box rather than the entire widget. A digital hub version of Apple TV, for example, with seamless integration of all your connected devices — from cable/satellite box to gaming consoles and Blu-ray player — would really make a big difference in the industry. TV makers are just throwing all sorts of features into existing sets and proclaiming them “smart,” even though most customers don’t bother with that stuff. They just turn the things on, fiddle with the accessories, and get on with their business.

The other problem with predicting what Apple might do is that you’re probably going to be wrong. Sure, an iPad mini was a predictable addition to the iPad lineup. But when the talk moves to a cheap iPhone, or an iPhone with a much larger display, credibility goes out the window. But there is something about the iWatch concept that is undeniably appealing. Besides, I like fancy watches, and this one is going to put anything I’ve ever used to shame — assuming it’s real of course.

Although I have played with Android powered gear from time to time, and endured those loud, irritating “Droid Does” TV spots for several years, I felt it was high time I spend extended face time with what has become the world’s most popular mobile OS. It stands to reason that it can’t be all bad; otherwise why are so many people using it?

I might have known where this would go, considering that Windows also has a huge customer base, and we all know its flaws. But at the end of the day, Microsoft’s OS also meets the needs of hundreds of millions of people. It powers banks, airline reservation systems, point of sale systems in stores and restaurants, and lots more.

The most significant difference between Android and Windows, however, is that the former is free. Handset makers sign up and can download copies of the appropriate software without paying license fees. Google doesn’t receive a penny from Android, although they do earn money from targeted ads that pollute some of the apps and services on an Android device. But they also have to put up with the decisions of some handset makers, and wireless carriers, to change things to suit their needs, because they have ceded control of the finished product.

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