re: If you were starting over

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Can you explain?

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First off, they're proprietary from their head to their feet. They have their own version of everything that tends to have a high markup with little added value to using their version over what everyone else is using (Thunderbolt, for example). Secondly, they're slowly moving towards taking complete control of the user's product out of their hands. The 2013 Retina MacBook Pro models were called "as unrepairable as you can get" by iFixit. Not to mention, their track record with product longevity is not as good as they would have you believe. Just between my girlfriend, her family, and I, I've seen four MacBook Pros suffer Logic Board failure (including my top of the line model with an i7 and 16GB of RAM) and two brand new iMacs completely fail within two months of purchase. When repaired, the iMacs proceeded to fail again within a month.

Every time we've approached them for assistance, repairs, or just information on the issues, they were extremely condescending and unhelpful. Every time they tried to sell us new machines when none of the machines with issues were over 3 years old. When I figured out that my girlfriend's Logic Board had failed, I told her to let them know the issue. They laughed at her when she told them she "thought it was the Logic Board", and they told her that there was no way it was the logic board repeatedly. After their tools didn't come up with an answer, it was taken to the back. She called me to tell me it wasn't the Logic Board, and I was on the phone to hear them stammer through telling her that it was, in fact, the Logic Board after ignoring her saying that for 45 minutes while calling several "Geniuses" to re-run their tools.

They don't have an edge in any area anymore. The lifespan and cost-of-ownership of comparable models between vendors are basically exactly the same. Their hardware is in no way superior, and they've basically covered up the fact that their unibody design is causing failures due to insufficient heat dissipation. There's a reason they had to stop offering discrete graphics in the MacBook Pro line for a while. They offer it again, but there are reports that heat is still a major issue. In two years, it's likely these will fail as well. This is also considering the fact that they've had these exact failures for years across several different models and have had to issue recalls for some due to these failures happening within only a couple months of purchase.

Lastly, the products are marked up and sold as a fashion statement. They tell people they're better, but they can't explain why. They're no safer, and in fact, the world record times for hacking are almost always set on Apple products. These times are in seconds. They're the "upscale" computer to a lot of people. That's it. People buy a trendy, pretty computer with decent power and get to feel smug about it. I loved my MacBook Pro when I ran Linux or Windows on it because it used the hardware better. In OS X, the performance hit was noticeable. It was a great Netflix machine, and it looked beautiful. Other than that, I don't see any reason to put it on a pedestal.

That's why Macs are stupid.

Note: I don't really think Macs are stupid. I just think that they're overrated and overpriced. I still own Macs to develop natively for OS X and iOS, and that doesn't seem to be changing any time soon.