[onion2k]

I don't necessarily believe that a priori spending $500 on a pair of pants is irrational, but I really struggle to imagine any pair of pants being worth that much money unless they are lined with gold or something.

I don't think Steve Jobs went shopping for pants. Nor do many of the people who buy this sort of garment. They either have an assistant who buys things for them, whose goal is to keep them happy and not blow a predetermined budget, or they go to a store and sit in a nice suite where a personal shopper suggests things to them. In either scenario the price of individual items probably don't even get a mention.

[kridsdale1]

Steve was a notoriously picky shopper and obsessed with details. In the biography it says they went without a dishwasher or something in his house for half a year because he could never be satisfied with the geometry or finishing. So his billionaire wife washed dishes by hand.

[onion2k]

I don't doubt it, but I don't think Steve was out there browsing at Lowe's either. You can be very picky and still not shop the way the rest of us shop.

[astrange]

Palo Alto has its own reality distortion field that makes billionaires pretend they're 1950s middle class families, so he probably did shop at Ace Hardware.