Whenever Apple releases a new product, folks will sacrifice one of these gadgets in order to dissemble the component parts and attempt to determine their identity and cost. On the basis of this information, and a few educated guesses, we’re supposed to know exactly how much Apple really spent on each unit.

Recently, for example, it was claimed that the $599 Mac mini carries a component and manufacturing price tag of $376.20. This may not seem so large a figure, but when you factor in the price of shipping along with distributor and dealer markups, well maybe Apple isn’t making such a huge profit on this particular model. Assuming the figures are accurate — and I’ll get to that in a moment — the use of mobile parts for a tiny desktop is blamed for the high cost to make one.

The theory goes that if Apple built them cheaper, from standard desktop parts for example, maybe they could charge less. Understand that such suggestions usually come from people who probably haven’t a clue how to produce anything other than words in a word processing application. Certainly I make no pretense of understanding all the issues involved, but I think I can make a few observations that strike me as utterly logical.

None of these cost estimates, you see, takes into account what Apple is really paying for raw materials and manufacturing. The reason is that those contracts are negotiated in secret and even Apple stockholders will not see that information in the company’s financial statements.

In short, it is quite possible Apple is benefiting to an unknown degree by special deals, quantity purchases and other arrangements that you and I know nothing about. Indeed, Apple is blamed for paying extra to use mobile parts, but by purchasing larger quantities for use in both desktops and note-books, they actually save money. That’s the sort of common sense information that analysts don’t really comprehend.

Indeed, this is all an exercise in futility. Do the dissemblers work as hard on taking apart a Dell or an HP? If not, why not? Shouldn’t we know what it really costs the two largest PC makers on the planet to build their gear? Certainly they aren’t making huge profits these days on personal computers. Is that the result of their inability to get good deals on components? Do we credit Steve Jobs, Tim Cook and the rest of Apple’s executives with the ability to get better terms?

Of course, one of the biggest advantages of all is that Apple limits the number of models it produces, and only offers simple upgrades for each, such as a faster processor, extra RAM, a large hard drive or, where possible, graphics processor. All told, it allows Apple to order larger quantities of each part. The PC box makers offer such a confusing choice that it’s often difficult for you to know which model and which specific configuration of that model is right for you. It also increases a manufacturer’s production costs, and hurts profits.

All this demonstrates, of course, is that Apple has found a way to make good profits even in a down economy and still accumulate billions of dollars in reserve cash to use however they see fit. The response from far too many members of the media is that there is some sort of alleged Apple Tax, where the company charges extra for the same gear you can get from other companies.

This has been shown time and time again to be just not so. As I’ve long maintained, a Mac and PC, when equipped with essentially the same hardware across the board and comparable software cost about the same. Sometimes the Mac is a bit more expensive, sometimes the PC. On the high end of the market, a Mac Pro, a workstation and not strictly a personal computer, will actually cost less than a similarly-configured Dell Precision Workstation.

As I’ve said before, it’s not an issue of whether you actually need a specific feature or not, or whether Apple should configure its products differently. The only fair way to do this sort of match-up is to use what’s actually available, not what you want to be available.

Yes, it’s true that if you buy the spare parts and build one yourself, you will be able to get a PC for less. You can even make it a “Hackintosh” using some of the tips posted online to induce Mac OS X to run on regular PC hardware. However, you are not factoring in the value of your time in researching and selecting the components you need, assembling and testing them and, finally, installing Mac OS X.

With a genuine Mac, Apple builds everything for you, and provides it with a standard warranty in case something goes wrong. If you make a mistake building your home-brewed PC, you will have to waste time repairing the unit or paying someone else to do it for you. That may be well and good from a hobbyist standpoint, but in the real world, most people would clearly prefer to buy something that just works out of the box.

Not being in an absolute rush to get an iPhone 3GS, I opted to simply order one from Apple’s online store after I got confirmation that I could upgrade without paying an early termination or conversion ransom to AT&T. The order was officially placed on June 23rd for the black 16GB version.

Why not 32GB? Well, largely because I don’t use my white 3G to store video content, and I can certainly fit the relevant portion of my music library within 16GB, so I opted to save my money. Besides, I’ll probably end up upgrading again next year, assuming AT&T allows it.

When I placed the order, I was quoted a shipping delay of two to four business days. But on June 25th, I get a strange email stating: “Our records indicate that we were unable to obtain approval from AT&T to complete your recent iPhone purchase. As a result, we have canceled your iPhone order.”

Understand that you have to undergo a preapproval process before you place an iPhone order, during which time the wireless carrier’s computers are checked and your account and eligibility are verified. So what went wrong?

Story continued in this week’s Tech Night Owl Newsletter.

Well, the pricing for buying Windows 7 has been officially announced, in case anyone cares. Understand that Apple has already informed users of Mac OS X Leopard that they can upgrade to Snow Leopard for a mere $29. Since most of the Intel-based Mac user base is using 10.5, you can regard that as, essentially, the main upgrade package.

For those still using Tiger, you are forced to buy Snow Leopard in a bundle that includes iLife ’09 and iWork ’09, but the increase in price above buying those two application suites separately is actually a mere $11. Such a deal!

Add to this the fact that Microsoft has been busy attacking Apple with this ubiquitous Laptop Hunter ads, both online and on TV, in which a fake buyer picks a PC over a Mac because it’s cheaper.  Now you regular readers know that I find those spots to be obnoxious and boring, and their deceit over selecting models that don’t fulfill the would-be purchaser’s stated needs is just overwhelming. Indeed, now that Apple has reduced the price of most of its note-books, other than the basic white MacBook, the insinuation of higher prices for Macs is even more misleading.

Surprisingly, I haven’t seen any changes in those spots (though I suppose they could be in the works), but we do know the upgrade tax for Windows 7 now, and it ain’t cheap, regardless of which version you select.

A Windows 7 Home Premium upgrade, for example, weighs in at $119.99 and it’s $199.99 if you choose the standard retail product. However, many Windows users simply buy new PCs, or, if they want to upgrade, they will opt for an OEM version, the same edition that is sold to manufacturers, for a lot less money.

However, Apple plays in a different league. There is no feature-limited version of Mac OS X. You get one size fits all, with every single feature present and accounted for. Thus the real equivalent product to Snow Leopard is actually Windows 7 Ultimate, for which the upgrade price is $219.99 and the full version is $319.99. Ouch!

In the European Union, where Microsoft faces an edict about excluding third-party browsers, they will evidently offer only retail packages and not upgrade versions for the time being, until things sort themselves out. Serves them right, I suppose.

To be sure, Microsoft’s price policies and alternatives are nothing if not complicated. So if you preorder Windows 7 after June 26th, and until July 11th in the U.S. and Canada, you can get the Home Premium version for $49.99 and the Professional edition (which sits between Home Premium and Ultimate) for a “mere” $99.99. I don’t have the space or patience to list the pricing in other countries.

So we really should be talking about the Microsoft Tax here.

Now please don’t consider this an all-out attack on Windows 7. It’s not fair to review a product before it’s actually released. In fact, the folks who have evaluated the prerelease editions say it’s faster and far more reliable than Vista, although it shares the same core structure. Maybe it won’t come close to Snow Leopard, but a better Windows will help egg on Apple to excel as well, and that’s a very good thing. Besides, since a large number of businesses do depend on Windows, you really want them to run efficiently and reliably. The next time you wait on the phone for long minutes because of a computer crash, you’ll know what I mean.

In any case, this whole strategy once again demonstrates to one and all that Microsoft remains without a clue as to what they ought to be doing to better market their products. They are so used to dealing with business users who hold long-term subscriptions and PC makers with huge contracts that they simply cannot comprehend the needs of regular people. Their brain-dead upgrade and full version price policies clearly indicate this. The special preorder price will conflict with the vacation plans of many potential customers, and without a major publicity campaign to accompany this special offer, I expect most Windows users will simply miss it.

Or maybe that’s Microsoft’s real intention. For people who complain the upgrade prices are too high, they can point to their special marketing initiative, even though it will too late for customers to take advantage of it. I do suppose that Microsoft could extend the offer. A better idea, though, would be to give customers a few months, perhaps until the official release date, and be done with it. I’m willing to say that they’ll get a lot more orders and far more income than they would receive from full price purchases.

But it’s not my place to tell Microsoft what to do. Clearly, up until recent years, they have managed to succeed with most of their new product initiatives, despite being largely retreads of innovations pioneered by their competitors. Even if Windows 7 is as miserable a failure as Vista, you can bet Microsoft will still make boatloads of money from it, and that’s all they care about, really.

I don’t really care if the decision came down from Steve Jobs, Tim Cook or another Apple executive, but the rollout of the new iPhone software was far less troublesome than last year. For one thing, Apple released it two days ahead of the unleashing of the iPhone 3GS (the space no longer is part of the name). In addition, they clearly tested 3.0 far more thoroughly, and it clearly doesn’t have all the ills that plagued the 2.0 upgrade.

As you recall, Apple had to deliver several maintenance updates before things settled down, and even then I was the victim of occasional application crashes that returned me to the Home screen. Sometimes I even had to force a restart, and that happened either in Mail or Safari.

That was yesterday.

I often tell readers to be cautious about installing major upgrades, give it a few days for the dust to settle down, so we know if there are serious problems. But as a long-time early adopter, I seldom take that advice, so within five minutes after the iPhone 3.0 software was listed as available in iTunes, I was busy downloading it. Indeed, the installation went flawlessly, but I didn’t take the opportunity to put a stopwatch to the process. I just went back to work.

Later on that morning, I disconnected my white iPhone 3G from its USB cable and did a little checking. For some reason, I wasn’t able to retrieve new email messages, so I restarted. After that everything worked flawlessly, something I can still say one week later.

No I use the iPhone rather heavily for Internet access and phone calls, so it requires a daily recharge. I made special efforts to check image-laden email messages and the sites that would occasionally cause Safari to quit. It was all quite uneventful.

Over the first week, I also noticed noticeably snappier performance, from switching and launching apps to accessing my favorite Internet haunts. The improvement probably isn’t sufficient to be measurable, although it does seem I save a second or two on retrieving most sites.

The long-delayed cut, copy and paste feature works well, but it’s easy to confuse the finger motions with the one that simply magnifies text. You get used to it after a while, but I wonder why this issue is seldom mentioned. Maybe it’s just me.

An AIM 3 came out days after the iPhone upgrade, so I was able to give Push Notification a try. It’s real simple, actually. If you’re doing something else on your iPhone, you’ll see a notice on the screen about instant messages waiting in AIM. The pop-up menu is not dissimilar from the one you already seen when SMS messages arrive.

One positive note in all of this is the fact that nothing seems to have deteriorated in any way. Call quality and connection reliability are about the same, which for AT&T means fairly good, but not quite perfect. Sure we know AT&T is late to the party with tethering — so you can use your iPhone as a wireless modem with your Mac or PC — and MMS support. But these issues are secondary to the network, and it’s fair to say that AT&T has gotten better. Dropped calls are less frequent than they used to be, and most of the test spots in my neighborhood deliver a fairly decent 3G connection, though it drops to EDGE with a single bar at one highly-trafficked area about a mile from here.

I wonder if all that talk about Apple cutting a deal with Verizon Wireless when the AT&T contract expires is partly designed to throw some uncertainty into the consciousness of the latter’s executives. When the iPhone first came out, they were barely prepared to handle the load on their network. Maybe they didn’t expect sales to take off so fast, or customers to use their browsers so often, but that’s their fault. They should have been prepared, though it’s also true that network upgrades don’t happen instantaneously. It may take years to make the requisite improvements.

In saying that, if AT&T hopes to double the speed of their 3G connections, the better to support the 3GS, they better hurry fast. Otherwise, they will get tons of complaints from people who find Internet access has scarcely improved.

All in all, the iPhone 3.0 upgrade gets an “A,” and AT&T gets a “B,” with plenty of room for improvement. I should tell you, though, that I’m glad they made their upgrade policies somewhat more lenient for many of their customers who bought an iPhone 3G last year.

Since I won’t have to pay a penalty, I already have a 3GS on order from Apple’s online store. Sure, I could have just picked one up at an Apple Store in this area, but I’m in no rush. I didn’t even pay extra for speedier shipping. But I will have mine no later than the middle of next week, and I’ll report my experiences early on. They will, by the way, be real experiences from an owner and not those of a writer who gets a couple of weeks to play with a new tech toy and then has to send it back. My new iPhone 3GS is a gadget I plan to use every single day for a number of hours. And my son, due back shortly from his gig in Spain, is hinting he wants my 3G. I’ll think about it!