See? Even that bit of history tells us that silver == cheap. Any way you slice it, whether it fits your interior decor or not, silver plastic looks and feels cheap. It's not that silver is an ugly color, it's just that the application doesn't work. It's usually matte or 'satin' (low-gloss) or 'flat' in order to avoid creating a nasty reflective surface; the color combined with the texture is lame.

When was the last time you saw a 'satin', 'matte', or 'flat' silver car? I'll bet it was 20+ years old, and badly oxidized. See? Ugly. Cheap. Neglected. Worn out. Junk.

How many Apple products are silver-painted plastic? How many Macs, iPods, iPhones? Sure, there may be one or two silver products, but I wonder if they are the minority, nowhere near best-selling. Does anyone know of a link to verified sales data for Apple consumer products, showing breakdown by color?

Here's an informal poll of favorite iPod Nano colors and silver is a distant third (black is most popular, as I expected, followed by red.)

Apple, the king of 'cool', the prince of 'popular', the sultan of sophistication, and Apple's customers, prefer other colors, it seems.