Ripley... Apple works only with apple approved/backed stuff... which means companies that pay tithe to Apple. Win & Linux OS's like Ubuntu work with freaking nearly everything.
Not true at all, Vista and Win7 still don't work with many legacy printers etc. and linux hardware support is very marginal in the end. With linux the situation is backwards, legacy devices usually work and new stuff doesn't.
Sure, Apple software seems more stable..but then again, its working only with other apple software and primarily with apple hardware. The fact that Win OS is ALMOST if not more stable than any apple OS while accepting almost every known piece of hardware out there speaks volumes.
It's not only about how stable things are, it's about ease of use.
I'm not a fan of MS and neither am I a fan of Apple. But I have to give kudos where they are due. I have a hell of a time setting up the insanely expensive gadgets my father has to buy for his imac... which I always remind him would be costing 1/3rd less money to do the exact same thing if he just had purchased a PC. Not to mention I can upgrade my PC anytime I want..his mac is stuck on what it is and any upgrade he needs = a whole new machine. Ca-ching! apple.
He could get a powermac and have a case to upgrade to. iMac is like a laptop, it's inherently not upgradeable and people who buy it usually buy it for partly esthetic reasons. One should also note that part of the 'it just works' ideology boils down exactly to limited choice of hardware. People are willing to pay premium to have a product that they can plug in and expect to work - most Mac users would consider tweaking or opening the case as the last thing they'd ever want to do I'm sure.
I used to tweak windows, overclock, build watercooled rigs etc. Oddly enough my super-duper windows rig is getting 5% of the use lately and Mac 95%. I don't have the TIME anymore. The win7 box takes 20+ seconds even to wake up from sleep mode, the mac is open in 1.
There's also the concept of flexibility. The ability to function with a myriad of devices which you can jury rig or innovate. Apple hardware and software simply do not have this. Why? Because Apple doesnt want to allow it.. it would mean money doesn't go to them. All their claim of wanting to keep the 'purity' and 'functionality' of their products is steaming bull turds. MS does it, Linux systems does it.. Apple just wont do it because of $$$$.
The only hardware problem I've run into was when I upgraded to iPhone 4 and found out it doesn't accept the same 20 dollar car tobacco-lighter charger I used for the iPhone 3.
The only reason Apple is still in the market is because of their non-computer products. I wont deny the Ipod and Iphone are great and innovative products.. but they aren't good products. The mobile market is perhaps well suited to apple's business model of built-for-a-few-purposes and locked-in capability. Everything else is just overly expensive crap imo.
Hmm Apple has for long dominated photographs, newspapers, musicians desktops etc. And every client that sees I have a mac almost without exception comment 'I wish my company would let me have one too'. In fact some of our clients have moved to Mac already.
Surely most profits come from iTunes and devices around it, the computing side is far from meaningless though.
