Why do people knock Apple?
Trust, that's why. Faulty iPod batteries, iBook screen failures, ibook PSU overheating problems and now another set of screen problems - Apple have denied they all existed until the courts deemed otherwise - and even then, they've only been willing to rectify the problem withing the jusidiction covered by the class action. So a sucessful class action in the US wouldn't result in a recall in Europe. In fact apple would continue to insist that no problem existed.
The IBM PC took over the world by accident - and IBM stopped building PCs a couple of decades ago. This has actually been very good for consumers. Apple - who made an excellent and arguably superior product years ago - now seem to offer style and hype over quality and function.
I'm still running the same PC I built myself six years ago. True, the processor is more powerful these days, there's a flat-screen instead of a CRT, I have six times the memory I had at the start and my hard drive capacity has increased from under two hundred gig to over half a terabyte - and the graphics card has improved a little - and I'm running XP instead of 98 - but as any Pratchett fan would understand, it is still 'the thing and the whole of the thing' - the same PC I built years ago
Macs have tended to be built too small to last. Good at the time, but memory and storage capacity simply can't be upgraded enough in the face of the amount of data that users want to manipulate today. It's the oldest problem Macs have suffered from. Good machines, but no real staying power.
I am NOT knocking Macs. I'm not saying the PC is wonderful : truth is that a Mac of a given generation usually feels slicker and smoother than the corresponding average PC. The difference has always been that you could upgrade the PC a bit at a time, while the Mac would always be a straight out complete new box.
And this isn't so awful, if you can afford it. But when the new product turns out to have a major flaw which the manufacturer refuses to acknowledge until absolutely forced to - Then things become a bad joke.
I have an iPod Shuffle, which I love (except that it's just too damn small - I've put it down somwehere, and I just can't find it - honestly!
) - it's the only Apple product that I've owned since an ancient Mac desktop I had that was old back in the 80's (the pre-JPEG era. It kept running out of memory manipulating bitmap files. See what I mean?) - some of the products are really very good.
The problem with Apple is that they've changed from heroic innovators producing quality products and bucking the tide, to hype-merchants who ride the trends just ahead of the field and know how to produce attractive products - but at a premium price and with a seeming contempt for the consumer. They no longer want to please you, they just want to dazzle you and get your money.
It isn't so much that people knock the products. It's more that with DRM issues, software changes and replacements, premium prices on hardware and the occasional generic fault being blatantly ignored - the overheads associated with owning Apple products is popularly perceived as being far too high by many consumers.
It's a shame. Oh - before you flame me, or anyone else - remember this. You can have your doubts about the integrity of the company while still admitting that they've made some good products across the years.