What Draws Fanatics to Apple? A Little Fact, A Little Theory.

My Roots: Pretty Shallow

I grew up most of my childhood and early adulthood less than fifteen minutes on one side or the other of the Mason-Dixon Line. For those who don't know, this is the imaginary line that divides the North (the Yankees) from the South (the Rebels). During the Civil War, men were forced to fight their own relatives who lived just miles away on the opposite side of the line. In my few years, however, I've done a fair amount of traveling, and there's one thing that's made abundantly clear. The further you go into either side of this imaginary line, the more fanatical the people are about which side they're on, and why.

While this fact holds true on both sides of the line, the fanaticism is radically different depending upon which side of the line you currently fall. No matter whether you were born there or just simply raised there, the southern side of this line win the trophy for being the most extreme about their stance. In many of their opinions, the Civil War still isn't over, and eventually, they'll amass some troops from out of their hats and take over the country. The northerners aren't just incredibly shy about their opinions of the southern radicals -- the south lost the war a long time ago, and they need to get over it and move on.

Growing up on the line though was a bit different. Not too far to the south there were many small towns where only white people were brave enough to stop at a gas station or a cafeteria. Not too far to the north, even illegal immigrants were welcomed with open arms.

Not to get into a "race" discussion, I'm going to end this description here.

The Technological "Mason-Dixon Line"

In comparison to the debates between Apple fanatics and the rest of the computing world, it's pretty much the same thing. Apple has used some pretty interesting marketing campaigns to ensure that this imaginary line is drawn between their products and the rest of the world's electronics. Those on the far spectrum of this line believe that Apple products are going to launch an assault that will take over the electronics market. People on the Apple side, but closer to the line believe that Apple makes some fine products, but their zealot brethren are a bit over the top about it. People on the other side of the line believe they won the war years ago and they just don't care.

People switch sides of this imaginary line, some moving in, others moving out. Hell, I've moved over the line once. And I'm probably going to soon cross back over again. I bought an iPhone3G... then I bought a MacBook Pro. I've been perfectly happy with both. Now, there are some advances on the other side I'd like to move to. For whatever reason though, the people on the far end of the Apple side, even when forced on the other side of the line, take the "prisoner of war" attitude -- "My company makes me use a PC, but at home I'm ALL APPLE!"

The "Far South"

The other day I made the statement that "it appears to me" that Apple's products are almost always ranked best in class, but that the class they are in is always a version or two version behind the rest of the world. Apple can squeeze more juice out of a 1GHz processor than a lot of other companies can get out a 1.3GHz. However, Apple's newest mobile product uses a 1GHz processor, while the rest of the world has moved to 1.83GHz, likely too big a chasm for Apple's best fine-tuning to hurdle. Likewise in their laptops, Apple released this year's lineup with Intel i5's, while other companies are boasting the Intel i7's.

Apple's take on this is to restrict the platform's capability to not enable users to have anything on their device which would inhibit their experience. The rest of the world's take -- if it won't handle it, people won't use it. The end users can decide if the software they're using is not performing well, and if they aren't satisfied, then they'll find a different piece of software to replace it.

One of my friends, upon hearing this statement, was immediately up in arms. His statement was that if I got the device I was contemplating, it would do more things than his Apple product, but it would do those extra things slowly. My rebuttal -- it will do everything yours will do with at least the same performance, likely with even BETTER performance... then it will do some other stuff on top of that. And I won't have to cough up the "Apple Tax". Not to be bested, he argued for as long as we had time to talk that people would be less happy with the cheaper device with more functionality, because the added functions would have sub-standard performance. His feeling was that people would be happier with the more expensive and more restricted device because it wouldn't lack performance on anything that it did.

Middle Ground

From a friend who's been on the Apple side of the line for a lot longer time, but never so deep, comes more reserved opinions about Apple's rash of app rejections, app approvals, inconsistent regulations, and EULA changes. His statement on it -- "It's like the computing line is run by an entirely different company than the mobile line. The mobile line [from Apple] is something I have no desire whatsoever to get involved in with."

I've heard similar statements from the Windows users closer to the line, things such as "I wish my computer did , but it's not worth paying an extra dollars for it."

Straw Man Defense

And the people on the Deep-Apple side of the line use some pretty vague and unverifiable arguments to stay there. My favorite line so far in all my discussions with people on both sides of the line comes from the zealot mentioned two paragraphs prior -- "Apple's core UI and kernel haven't changed in the last 10 years [...] there's a massive learning curve between Windows 98 and Windows 7." In case you're missing the irony... here's a few links (and DATES) that may clear it up:

Windows 95 (1995)
Windows 98 (1998)
Windows 2000 (2000)
Windows Me (2000)
Windows XP (2001)
Windows Vista (2006-2007)
Windows 7 (2009)

Mac OS 7.5.3 (1996)
Mac OS 8.1 (1998)
Mac OS 9 (1999)
Mac OSX 10.0 (2001)
Mac OSX 10.3 (2003)
Mac OSX 10.5 (2007)
Mac OSX 10.6 (2009)

(I don't think either of these guys have had any major redesigns in the last 15 years, but they've both been re-skinned enough times. In the middle of all this though, Apple switched architectures, which is something that pretty much BEGS some kernel changes. Windows... well, it's still pretty much up in the air.)

Conclusion

What makes Apple Fanatics... Fanatical? Well, it's that same "war-time" mentality that some people keep about them all the time. It's infectious and magnetic. People with the same over-the-top ideals will group up in droves, and like protesters, radical southerners, or any other minority group, they're going to yell at the top of their voice hoping someone hears them. Meanwhile the rest of the world will most likely just continue to ignore them as nothing more than a small nuisance. Those of you on the line who can still make rational decisions and have reasonable discussion, I applaud you. Those ignoring Apple as nothing more than a small nuisance, beware. And you over-zealous lot on the far Apple side of the line, Apple computers are just Personal Computers (PCs) no matter what you choose to call them. A rose by any other name smells just as fragrant, and a turd by any other name still stinks.