"Instead of comparing the quality of Apple computers to an elitist BMW, maybe we should use Harley Davidson instead. Imagine a class of people who dare to be different, and stand apart from the crowd, but still are part of a deep-rooted culture of like-minded people and American values. Okay, not so much anymore since Apple has become the new in-thing and a little too popular for my liking, but you catch my drift."

I get your drift but what!? You're kidding, right? "Imagine a class of people who dare to be different, and stand apart from the crowd, but still are part of a deep-rooted culture of like-minded people and American values." Some consumers are imbued with all that extra "specialness" simply because they bought Mac computers and/or Harley Davidson motorcycles? You can't be serious. If so, wow, I thought the "personal bond" guy a few pages back was going overboard but now....

"I work in a computer lab so I am finding these replies amusing. Everyone who uses a Mac is capable of using a PC. Not everyone who is uses a PC is capable of using a Mac.

"Oh no! I can't use a Mac!"

I think that says a lot."

That does say a lot. About you. You work in a computer lab and actually believe that remarkably smug nonsense? Astounding...

"Dirty little secret - people who service and maintain computer systems are naturally prejudiced towards a computer systems that will give them job security, increased budgets and mystify their users with problems best solved by a Microsoft Certified Technician or a fully equipped Help Desk Team."

Well, maybe all that comes because there are probably hundreds of millions more PCs than Macs being used and they dominate the worldwide personal and business computer markets? That's neither dirty nor little nor a secret. It's simple economy of scale.

I've used Macs over the years, usually in school, I've always had an affinity for them, they've always had a charm to me, but when I actually switched about five years ago to using a snow iMac as my full-time personal home computer I came face to face with some harsh realities, the biggest one being that it's still a PC world, in terms of availability of peripherals and software, but even more importantly in terms of compatability on the web. I can't tell you how frustrating it was for me have to constantly switch between browsers to see if one of them would work with a plugin on a particular website that I frequented and sometimes none of them would help me, a lot of sites simply aren't written with Macs in mind and if the author thought about Macs, he or she probably didn't have a Mac to test it out on; thus it ain't gonna work right. After toughing it out for five years, deciding that I wasn't going to put up with the lack of expandability and upgrade-ability unless I bought a $2000+ Power Mac, I write to you from a PC, and I imagine I'll be doing so for the foreseeable future. I've had it for a couple months without a hiccup; it's not a bad machine. Oh yeah and honestly, there wasn't that much about the Mac that makes me pine for one again.

"On no, I only drive Fords, I could never drive a BMW. Why that is a foreign car!"

It works for them.

"Personally, I believe Apple is being greedy about its hardware profit margins and snobbish about its products although they lack basic features."

I don't think you can actually make the vague charge of "greedy" against any major corporation. People are paying these very high margins and feeling good about it. That is definitely a reason to keep doing what you're doing.

Until your market share goes down, that is. When their share drops below their targets, they'll have to decide whether lowering their prices will increase or actually decrease their sales. Part of that is the "country club" economic model. That is, if people want to feel isolated from the hoi polloi by paying for a first class ticket, you might as well charge them double - they're paying for the privilege of paying, and because others won't or can't.

Encouraging snobbishness is key to this model. To get people to pay exorbitant margins, you have to make them feel somewhat dirty and smelly if they don't.

And that model's been with us a long time, so it's nothing new. Neither is marketing small computing devices to women by making them look like lipsticks. Or giving computer models names that sound more like lipstick colors.

In the case of a first class section of the airplane, though, the guy who pays $300 extra for a glass of brandy and 4 extra inches of space for his butt is directly subsidizing my seat in coach. It's hard to see how Mac users giving Steve Jobs more money than his machines actually deserve benefits anyone other than Steve Jobs.

Do the Mac people realize that once they switched processors, Macs really *are* just PCs now, only with a different bunch of software?

I think Mac users should push Apple to sell the OS in a form that will run on a stock Dell Vostro or other cheap machine. From their standpoint, it should be the best of both worlds.

but it's bizarre from this side, too:

"the writing job I'm looking at requires using Office. I know there is a Mac version. But they said I'd be working on a PC. Period.... But it's definitely a reality for a writer."

I've been working as a writer and sending my stuff to Windows-using publishers for about 10 years now. If I don't want them to freak out, I do have to disguise my files as PC files--8.doc file names, for instance--but if I do, they don't even know I'm on a Mac. (Meanwhile, I just double-click on anything they send me to open it in Mac Office.) XP made that a lot less of an issue than it used to be. But the point is, it's a non-issue except for people who don't know anything about Macs.

"it's still a PC world... in terms of compatability on the web."

I use Safari and Firefox on the Mac and spend hours on the Web every day, and I don't run into any more incompatible Web sites than I did when I used IE and Firefox on Windows (which I did for a year at a job I had). The incompatibility is usually either a site that was built with proprietary FrontPage extensions, or ones that incorrectly tell you you're using an unsupported browser.