I’m not an Apple Fanboy–frankly, that level of anthropomorphization and attachment to a brand is kind of sad and weird. But maybe it’s not anthropomorphization in Apple’s case, because Apple isn’t really a brand, it’s a human. A human named Steve Jobs.
I’m not a fanboy, but I like Apple products, for the most part. My household has a couple iPhones, an iPad, an iMac, and a few Airport devices. But I also have a ThinkPad and a Windows 7 Phone, and I like them, too, for different reasons. My coworkers are constantly asking me why I don’t move to a MacBook Pro for my work machine, but I like having a different OS at work than the one I use at home. It makes the computing experience different, and I want to feel different sitting at my home computer than I do when I’m working.
Experience matters. Use case matters. This, more than anything else, is what I appreciate Steve Jobs for. I was talking to a gadget-obsessed friend yesterday who was hyping WebOS and saying it was far superior to iOS. When I pointed out the learning-curve differences, he derided the users that don’t want to spend a couple days figuring out a new OS. But the fact is, my 2-year-old daughter can navigate an iPad; iOS’s level of intuitiveness is important for a use-case that involves a two-year-old.
