"The Next Generation of Neural Networks" -- a Google TechTalk by Geoffrey Hinton in 2007. I have never been able to sit through 60 minutes of lectures without fidgeting constantly, however this one managed to keep my attention until the end.
Truly an amazingly great talk and worth watching through (even if you only only peripherally care about ANNs).
I think that it's simply a matter of getting what you believe you paid for. The implication of an alternative choice may not be clear to the contractor, but it might be important to the non-technical person (even if they don't specifically know what the technology is).
Perhaps the non-technical person had a trusted friend who is a Ruby on Rails expert -- and this person was not available at the time of initial development, but available later to maintain the app?
Interesting -- I am from Canada and AFAIK, even as a Canadian business, you can legitimately submit through the DUNS "US Government contractor" form for free.
I was stuck last year with a tight deadline for one of my enterprise apps (which needed the DUNS for me to publish) and I used this method; it cost me nothing and was complete within a few days.
But is it an accurate analysis when considering the costs of R&D?
As an example, Dropbox may invest $X in their product so that they could deliver $Y, but Box.net is more expensive... So if they make more money they must be exploiting us, right? Of course not... we hope :)
In this case it seems clear, Apple appears to have some unique R&D in this component... which may justify a (albeitly unknown) premium for the product.
Is the price right? I'm not sure. But they certainly seem to have an interesting edge with the tech.
That said (and the real point of my thought), I do wonder why we in the tech world place such a difference in R&D between HW and SW. If a HW company finds a niche, and does interesting tech, we still seem to devalue it compared to SW Dev (yes there are exceptions, but as a rule we seem to throw HW under the bus).
What's the difference? Why are these dichotomies acceptable in the software world but not the hardware world?
If Apple delivers a product that (apparently - without considering or understanding the actual R&D cost) costs less than competitors it's a problem... But in the SW world we barely bat an eye.
Is R&D and creativity in HW design is a valid cost?
Anyway, I'm not harping on your comment (which is valid in it's own right); I'm just curious and interested in the apparent difference in SW and HW innovations...
Truly an amazingly great talk and worth watching through (even if you only only peripherally care about ANNs).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyzOUbkUf3M