But I digress - Mom was actually the reason I wanted to chime in here, because she exemplifies the reason Apple was able to hold on to any sort of market share given the drastic difference in retail cost of their product from a comparably equivalent PC. Whenever people get into Apple vx PC arguments, I very rarely hear the real reason why most people who use Apple machines actually do. It isn't about what is faster or more powerful, as the average Apple-ite probably doesn't even know or care. Its not really about hardware at all except for the fact that it just happened to be a different building ground for the OS. It is the user experience of Apple that is (er, was anyway) its major selling point.
Someone made a comment earlier which cast aspersions on the average intelligence of the apple users, but I believe that in a way, the reason Apple appeals is because you really don't have to know a damn thing about computers to use one. The percentage of Mac users who even know that such a thing as the "sad mac" icon exists is a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of folks who have heard about the "Blue screen of death" so often it had to be shortened to an acronym.
I grew up on Apple - Had a IIc that Mom got to use when she got 30 of them for her class via a grant when she taught high-school. I remember hating Word Perfect and the fact that one needed a cheat sheet just to remember what obscure key combo would equal "Save" when the Appleworks WP was so intuitive to use. "Open-Apple+O" (command key for those who never heard it called that) for "Open" "+P" for "Print", "+S" for "Save" and so on. When I took a Pascal class, I never thought of going into programming despite a real knack for it because I just didn't think we needed better software! My mom used the computer just as much as I and was able to teach ESL kids biology and how to do their papers on the computer at the same time.
When I got a G4 I had to return it to COMPUSA because it did not, even with the added $600 program "virtual PC", run the hardware dependent software I wanted to use at the time. It came with both OS 9.x (which I loved because it was classic Macware) and OS X (Which I still hate because its too much like windows, but not quite it.) I used to be baffled by the small share of the market Apple claimed until I experienced the ability to buy a top of the line (pre-fabbed) PC + Monitor + all-in-one PSFC with the store credit from just the CPU/Display/Mouse/keyboard of the Mac AND STILL HAD $2,000 LEFT FOR SOFTWARE. Then I marveled that Apple had any bit of the pie at all.
After a year of trying to discover wtf was causing me the need to reinstall the damn system from the stupid "restore disk" (didn't even get a real windows cd with the Vaio) countless times and learning how to tamper with the OS so that it would work properly with any kind of consistency I fully understood the value of dollars spent to save headache. I am a nerd by nature, and I find it fun to toy with my machine and figure stuff out (to a degree) but most people just want to be able to turn it on and do the work they have to do. Due to fixing all the problems I had I learned how to get over the stupid "warranty void if broken" sticker over the screw on the PC chassis and even build my own. I can honestly say that I would never know what I know about computers at all if I had stayed with that G4.
When my Mom used to call me every two months after the IIcs had been replaced with Windows 98 and 2000 laptops because she couldn't connect to the internet AGAIN, I had the ability to troubleshoot her connection issues and tried to explain to her how to do it herself when it inevitably happened again, but she would get so frustrated that she gave up and didn't even try any more to use it for email. She used to berate me for spending the extra money on "luxury" like broadband when netzero was free. When she retired and gave back the laptop, I was astonished she even asked me whether she should buy a pc or mac. Despite her complaints about the cost, I told her without a doubt not to be an idiot and buy a Mac. A PC would have been utterly useless to her.
Three months into owning her ibook, she decided broadband was a necessity and now she even has a facebook page. She googles certain household problems before calling a pro (or me) and nearly had a fit when I borrowed her cable modem one night and didn't bring it back until noon the next day. She USES that ibook. Every single day. And if she were trying to understand why her PC kept restarting itself or didn't ever load she never would have discovered the internet long enough to start sending me those stupid hoax emails about the latest danger on the block or the latest LOLCat pictures.
Perhaps the reason that people didn't identify with the "I'm a Mac" guy is just because that guy is just a guy. The PC guy is serious and businesslike, with important serious things to do. One has to be smart to to all that. No one wants to realize that they are enticed by a product that was designed to be a little more "idiot proof" because that might mean that they might be that idiot it was proofed against.
I can proudly say I can now swap out my own hardware and overclock and fine tune and tweak and maybe even on occassion do a little bit of stuff I oughtn't to do (Once I quite accidentally was using the comcast servers after my account had been closed - I didn't know that it had been until I checked the address that was seemingly trying to hack my firewall and found a warning to cease and desist...) However when I ask myself if I have used the machine to actually accomplish much in the last 8 years since I went PC, I can't really show anything to be concretely productive in terms of income or even personal productivity beyond expanding my personal knowledge of computers and tech in general. In my own opinion Apple lost some of its charm when it became more like windows, which I had seen as trying to make PC as usable as Apple back in the day. Since then they've fallen into the same hype trap as Microsoft and started believing their own market spin rather than continuing along that original path of originality that set them apart in the first place.
On the other hand yet again, I would not likely be using that same G4 to type this ridiculously long analysis today as I am doing on that VAIO which replaced it. Had I kept the G4 it would likely have joined the ranks in the closet with the useless blue Imac along with a couple other less upgrade friendly machines in the last 8 years to sit and gather dust in its obselesence (sp?). The VAIO isn't quite the same beast it was, having gone through some surgeries in the video, optical drive, and memory departments, but the CPU and mainboard are still in service pending the readiness of the next iteration ending construction in the next week. My moms ibook is ridiculously slow for me to use, but she will not likely feel a need to upgrade for some time to come.
Basically, it is neither here nor there which is a better product. That is the entire reason we want to have a choice to begin with isn't it? Whichever is better for whoever is really a matter of perspective and nothing else.
