Why did Apple succeed so phenomenally?

October 13 2015

I feel like an insane number of people have an (unhealthy?) obsession with Apple for reasons that don't make sense to me. I've heard these reasons again and again:

* It just works
* It is high quality hardware
* It feels good

All of these seem highly subjective, and I don't really see anyone supporting them with hard facts or statistics. They seem overpriced at best, and irrelevant at worst.

Take iTunes for instance. If you own multiple apple devices, unless you _really_ know what you are doing, you don't want to anything other than a one-to-one pairing of your device and your iTunes. I also never understood how any one who has used iTunes can claim that Apple products are "easy to use", or "just work". Apple products are also only convenient when you are perfectly aligned with what they consider standard, or their expected use cases. For instance, if you have a video that you want to copy to your device, you need your video to be in _exactly_ the right format, or go around fumbling with multiple video converters or video players.

Of course, I find it pretty likely that I'm just not "getting it". If you consider yourself an Apple fan, or you just like the product line, I would love to hear from you about why you are ready to pay the premium for Apple. I am particularly curious to know whether the people who buy Apple products do it just because they like it, or if they think the increase in quality is worth more than the increase in cost.

On the other hand, if your opinion is similar to mine, I would love to hear from you and know that I'm not alone :)

Btw, I tried out a Macbook Air and I really like it. If I bought an Apple product for myself, that would be it.


Matt
[email protected]
Seattle


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