Why We {heart} Apple

The funny, friendly Apple

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Don’t you just love Apple’s footnotes? Like “Don't eat iPod Shuffle” from a while back?

The footnote to this picture, for instance, from the iMac Graphics page has the following footnote:

2. Dragon not included

Then you have all the other texts that make Apple... well... Apple. I especially like the way they tell us how to pair the Apple Remote to the iMac on their support pages:

Pairing your remote with your iMac

1. Invade your iMac’s personal space by getting up close to it...

Now, who could ever be mad at a company that tells you to “invade the product’s personal space”?!

The great design

It’s no wonder “Appleporn” gets 21,800 hits on Google (11,700,000 if you divide it into two words, but that may be because of the p0rn... ;) ); and the word is also a popular tag on Flickr, where the term first was born.

Apple porn is images (or even filmclips) of not only Apple products, but also Apple packaging.

Truth is; Apple puts so much effort into making good-looking packaging for the products they create; that you can’t even through it away. Raise your hands all of you who have an iPod... Now, raise your hand all of you who still have the box it came in? Exactly.

One especially good read regarding Apple packaging is the “Lick Me, I’m a Macintosh / What the hell is wrong with Apple that they still give a damn about design and packaging and “feel”?” by Mark Morford.

You can't help but notice. Apple seemed to really put some serious work into this, into the details, the packaging, the shape and texture. The rich black box, the clean unobtrusive font, the silver sliver inch-wide side-shot photograph of the PowerBook itself on the box lid.

It's the details. The way the power-indicator on the new iMacs dim according to the amount of light in the room. The way the Apple mice project an image of an actual mouse. The way the battery levels are shown on the batteries themselves, on the laptops. I guess you all have your own favourite Apple-detail... (Use the commentfield and share it, then!)

The ‘just works’-mentality

The most important thing, however is the good old Apple-motto: It just works.

The most frequent argument I get when talking about Apple and especially Macs with Windows-lovers is the pricing. Macs are expencive. However, you do get it all back in uptime... I have to restart my Dell, which I exclusively use as a big, noisy TiVo-replacement, about twice as often as my Mac. And to be quite honest: I preferr having a computer that stays on for as long as I want it to to one that commits suicide on random...

Also, Macs are a lot more hands-on... 75% of the time it’s completely logical what button to push to get the thing to do what I want. In Windows, I’d say the percentage would be about 30%.

Another aspect of the ‘just works’-mentality is the compatability. There’s still the myth in the PC world that Macs don't support the same files as Windows does.

Macs support almost every file format the average Wintel PC does!

The competition

Now, if not Apple, then who? Microsoft. Now, Microsoft would have to be one of the most rude, monopolist, crazy and unfair companies on the planet. Why on earth would you want to support that?!

Not that boicotting Microsoft should be a reason in itself for choosing Apple... There are enough much better reasons for doing so... Such as design, ease of use, lack of viruses, better security, attention to detail, more possibilities and so on...

What are your reasons for loving Apple?