I used to make fun of some of my Apple buddies who knew not to take me too seriously. I may even have done so here, but again, hopefully in a funny way that was meant as humor, not as serious critique.
If you ask me my true personal opinion, I will say this. Apple = great products and lead on being able to market on innovation but I believe they are overpriced.
I myself own an Ipod Touch. I use my MP3 players a lot and being the first touch interface player, it appealed almost overbearingly to my love of gadgets. When an app was announced to control my Squeezbox via the touch interface, that was the justification my brain needed and I payed the premium even though my previous MP3 player really did everything I needed it to do.
I/we now also own an IPad. Again, I hesitated at the price but then I realized that it was perfect for my wife. She wanted only to email, Facebook and browse the web. Had I bought her a cheaper but painfully slow to boot up netbook, she would never have used it. Because it is readily available, she now finds excuses to look things up. Actors names during movies, weather checks, news at breakfast, recipes, cloths shopping, etc. Also, compared to windows, there is virtually nothing she can accidentally misconfigure or break. Saving me lots of "Honey, how do I get this back?" time.
However, she does curse the thing regularly for not supporting Flash. Even some of her favorite cloths browsing shopping sites do not work without it. Although, for me, this may be a bonus and has factored nicely into it's ROI.
Also, the recent excuse of a multi-tasking feature is very poor and an obvious quick fix to consumer demand. It works but I expected more from Apple.
My best attempt at a non-biased opinion. There is definitely good and bad.
As for the Mac cool factor, I can see both sides of the argument. I can see why someone who made a logical choice based on their needs and preferences would be upset at being lumped in as a fan boy, but also to Cam's point, I have opened up my very 'corporately blah' looking HP laptop in the 'hipper' coffee shops and noticed the look of disdain from the white sea of Apple users. I'm surethese judgmental folk are but a small minority but they are a visible minority.
It used to be that Universal Acceptance was part of being the cool, new, young generation but like all things cultural, what starts as out one way, always tends to slide to the extremes of the spectrum. Both ends.
