A lot of us remember the good old days, or at least the remnants of the days when computers weren't standardized, Windows didn't exist, and a multitude of different "PC's" that ran on different architectures existed. Tandy, Commodore, IBM, and Apple as well as others fought for their share of this amazing new market of personal computing. Tandy eventually fell to making IBM compatible computers before dying off. Commodore produced the number one selling computer of all time, the commodore 64, but later had power struggles that led the company to it's death despite having hardware 2-3 years ahead of it's time. IBM opened their standard, so that anyone could make an IBM compatible computer without paying royalties creating what we today call the PC.
Then there's Apple. They were as proprietary as you could get and pricey. They suffered power struggles as well to the extent of firing Steve Jobs. But they're still here? Not only are they still here, they're doing quite well for themselves. But why?
As for how they survived the early years devoted users and lawsuits over the GUI mostly. In the mid 90's Microsoft saved them by buying $150 Million in nonvoting stock from their company and not revoking Office for Mac as they had threatened. This of course was just to end the legal battles over the GUI. But more recently, being trendy seems to be the only thing that they had going for them till the Iphone / Ipod touch. ( The one device concept that actually impresses me and isn't ridiculously overpriced )
During my time as a help desk tech I've noticed two groups of people who buy Macs PC's. People who do it to be trendy, and those who couldn't know less about computers that will pay nearly any amount of money to ensure even the slightest bit of perceived usability gain. I use perceived because I've met as many people that absolutely hate the way OSx is setup as those who like it. I find it no better, no worse in usability than windows other than the Mac keyboard layout makes no sense to me. (Command key placement sucks...)
My problems with Mac starts here... Elitist. Gah I hate them so much. Regardless of what they're following. When a person puts logical arguments aside, makes judgments based purely on personal feelings, and then insists that they're right, it just drives me up the wall. Like the first fact. A Mac is a PC. Since they switched to x86 they are identical hardware except for an EFI chip instead of a BIOS, which makes a difference in the functionality of the machine for oh, say the first 4-5 seconds after bootup. So, if they're the same, why does a Mac cost so much more?It's not OSx, which sells for a little less than $100 online.
Some may say, "They're more stable". I'd like to point out a few things.
A. If Windows only ran on 10% of the devices made, it may be that stable too.
B. If stability matters enough to where 2-3 weeks of continuously being on and used, as I've done on multiple occasions with multiple machines running XP, isn't stable enough, then you probably should be running Linux without a GUI.
"They don't get viruses.", Well of course they don't, they're 10% market share. If I'm trying to rip people off I'm gonna go for the biggest piece of the pie. Secondly, they're BSD, Mach, and GNU based. And if my understanding is correct, Mach doesn't really exist outside of OSX, and BSD has less of a user base than Linux leaving only GNU and their UI's vulnerabilities. Also, I'd like to point out that if you're careful, Windows doesn't get viruses either. I ran my laptop for more than 3 years using it every day without a virus or spyware scanner and never got either. But if you want to pay more so that you can do questionable things on the internet, by all means. Or you could use free Avira and Spybot.
I would say maybe I'm missing something, but the more I use Macs the less difference I really see. It's still a PC, running a PC operating system, using the same internet and at an increasing percentage, the same software.
And what's worse, is that they really are making a boat load of profit off each machine sold because while they may spend 10-20% more building them out of high quality parts than that OEM machine the majority of us use, they turn around and charge 50-100% more depending on how high end the machine is. Don't believe me? Dell does the same thing with their XPS lineup. And if you want, lookup the parts used in a Mac and then compare the prices. They're overpriced for the same cursed thing. And when people pay $2k for a $600 machine, children starve. $408 = Child going to school, having meals every day, and making a life for them and their families for an entire year. So that Mac just took more than 3 years of a better life for some kid that'll never have a chance. Think about that.
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