In business terms, yes. But it's the same gimmick as people who love Britney Spears because she's in the charts. Or buy Rolex watches or Oakley shades or what have you. Are you selling a product based on its qualities or is it just a bunch of lemmings lining up for a brand? And in the case of computers we're talking about the most complicated machine by far in your house, which I think is a really dumb place to shop by brand (or in cars for that matter).
Yeah, that's a point. Personally I think this is very overstated, they are better at usability than most competitors, but it's not like there's a huge gap there. It's more the legend and the cult driving this perception. Above all, they have succeeded in being "different". And when you're different, you don't really compete on the same terms with everyone else anymore.
Indeed. Its called brand attachment, and its one of the most powerful tools in marketing. In fact, brands at times have relied heavily on 'word of mouth' rather then spending millions on campaigns to promote their product and if a company can somehow find themselves in such a position, they've hit the gold mine.
Exactly, Apple are different. Even if other brands have caught up, they were the first to make advances in mobile phones and MP3 players and that in itself has to be attractive to buyers who will, on that basis assume that Apple are still ahead of the game. I find it pretty hard to even compare Macs to PCs though, they serve completely different purposes. Macs are aimed at industry (film, music, photography) while PCs are the more practical and therefore are attractive to the business man or student not to mention they are about 100 times more user friendly to any gamer.
The gap is bridging closer. Nokia and Sony Ericsson have no choice. 8 years ago, Apple weren't even a competitor in their field, now they're beating them at their own game. Its not like back in the day when it was Apple vs. Microsoft. This war between phone makers and Apple will last a long time unless one is able to buy out all its competitors.
But I've still got to ask you. Although Apple have achieved to 'distort its customers reality', in what way is it detrimental to them and how are they suffering? They seem to be coming on in leaps and bounds. I don't really see how they've outgrown it.
P.S Seeing as you're a computer engineer, Martin. Do you have any idea what this virus is: 'Troj/Rustok-N'
. Ad-Aware is useless and won't detect it. Spankwire.com of all sites alerted me to it. Thank god I'm such a pervert or I wouldn't have ever known about it.