What point does it make? I am not interested in buying the book, but to me it suggests that Apple highly values design and its design team. I think the book is something Steve Jobs would have loved.
The problem is not the book, the problem is the pricing for the book which he had nothing to do with.
At 30$ or 300$ the company is not going to get meaningful revenue, or likely enough to pay the cost of production back. So, the pricing needs to relate to something else.
The point of the book wasn't to juice the "Other revenue" line in their quarterly report, it was to produce a high-end art book of their design work. It actually makes more sense as a high dollar item considering that allows it to be made with high quality materials and become a collectors item. At $30 it would probably be junk, uninteresting to collectors/designers and the mass market alike.
The argument is they could use the same materials and sell it for 30$. At 300$ they are already going to be out millions. So, the difference in price is just not going to be meaningful until they start selling 30,000+ copies.
The bugatti veyron for example sells for ~$1.5 million, but it costs more than twice that to make ($6.25 million). However, as VW only sold ~50 veyron's per year it's was just not an issue for VW compared to the 10.14 million cars they sold per year.
I don't have a time machine, but why do you think he wouldn't have done the book? He was responsible for the ridiculous 20th Anniversary Mac ($7499 in 1997!):
I don't think he was responsible for the 20th Anniversary Mac, which was released in March 1997. Apple bought NeXT in february 1997, and Jobs only be became de facto chief of Apple after Amelio was ousted in July 1997.
Is it, though? It had to have been one of Ive's first projects at Apple, and you can't get good industrial design without putting stuff into the hands of users. Who knows how much collective knowledge and experience Apple internally acquired with that work.
As far as a consumer product or a moneymaker, yeah, it's crap.
The point being made is your house is on fire and the firefighters show up with an ice cream cone. It's a lovely gesture in the right context, but we've got way bigger problems at hand.
In every market segment Apple plays in they're facing incredibly stiff and in many cases, superior competition. To make matters worse Apple "playbook", that attention to detail, the advertisements, etc -- yes it's taken a while but it's been mostly cracked. To be clear that's good for any of us who've been fans of that book, but it's absolutely not good for Apple should they choose to remain stagnant.
The result is a situation where Apple's hard won customers -- like me -- are looking to other companies and they're "speaking our language", offering products and services that are on-par and in many cases, simply better.
And it's not just desktop -- Siri is stagnant/broken, the iOS App Store is a mess, Email, on and on.
My point is at a time where competition and strategic advantages are under incredible stress, where incredibly obvious mistakes are being made in core product lines, Apple releases an outrageously high-priced picture book. It's totally fine, understandable, admirable even, if you think all's going well, but I do not think things are going well.