Apple: Beauty Is Only Skin Deep

Let's face it: Apple products are for Luddites. Here's the typical Apple product user's comments:
1) It's slick, smooth and attractive. It's stylish.
2) I don't have to figure things out.
3) I don't have to make choices.
4) I don't care how the thing works. I just want it to work.
5) It's easy.
6) It's intuitive.
7) "The technology gets out of your way."
8) It doesn't crash.
9) It doesn't get viruses.
10) It's better for graphic/video editing.

And the truth:
1) Well, if you like staring at a blank sheet of paper or a blank wall, then Apple's your thing. Minimalism at its worst. Style over function. One (or few), button that forces you to go deep into submenus or scroll forever to get to what you want to do, or it's just not there at all. Personally, I prefer to be able to tell the top from the bottom, and to me style means form, not formlessness.
2) Because there's nothing to figure out. What you see is what you get, and since Apple tells you what, where, when and how to think, it's easy.
3) Apple forces you to do things one way: their way. If your mind doesn't work exactly the same way, that's tough. Forget about alternate ways of doing and getting at things.
4) Ultimate luddite attitude. It might take some modicum of effort to understand what's going on. And then other people might ask you the questions that you're asking everybody else. Instead of understanding so that you never have to ask a question... The fact is, if you understand just a little about how the thing works, not only will it no longer be this vague scary thing but you'll know much better how to make it work for you. You'll be able to do things that right now you can't even imagine.
5) It's easy because there's nothing to it. Literally. Want to change your wallpaper on your iPhone? Tough! Apple makes things easy by not allowing you to do anything different or useful with their products.
6) If by "intuitive" you mean totally illogical, backwards, disorganized, limiting and inefficient...
7) This one really makes me stabby. The only way for "technology to get out of your way" is for you to not use technology. Which in most cases means you'll take ten times as long, have a far less polished and professional result, and everyone will laugh at you. Yes, poorly written and buggy programs can be frustrating and take more time and energy than they should. That's the beauty of non-Apple products: they all give you lots of choices, so if one program or app doesn't work well, just ditch it and find something that does. With Apple products, your choices are quite limited. They have a much smaller market share, so they're not worth many developers spending lots of time and energy on. The iOS situation is only slightly different: they claim many more apps in their App store, except most of them are fluff or identical to most of the others only with a different "skin". Apple's requirements are such that doing something truly unique and different with an iOS device is pretty much impossible.
8) This one is just an out-and-out lie. I've watched Apple computers crash and burn in just as many ways and just as many times as the others. If yours hasn't crashed then it's probably because it's still pretty much the way it came out of the box, with nothing else ever having been installed. Windows machines are just as reliable if treated the same way. And Linux (which Apple stole for OS X) crashes too.
9) Because they are not a target because they are too few to spend the energy on. And there do happen to be a few, it's just hard for them to spread because... wait for it... there isn't a big enough presence on the Internet for them to consistently and effectively network with each other. If they were the dominant product, they would not be any less susceptible to malware than the current dominant product is.
10) This has almost never been true. Apple hardware has always been less powerful (and at a much higher price point) than PC hardware, and much less flexible. The limiting factor has been software, but even that is mostly a self-perpetuating myth. People who want to be "cool" and "elite" always have used Apple because they knew that most people didn't and therefore wouldn't know any better than to believe them when they made those claims. There was a time in the video and photo industries when Apple was where most of the companies were putting their efforts and money, primarily because of the myth, but that hasn't been true for a very long time. Apple tried very hard to keep things in their court with with nearly proprietary hardware (remember Firewire? and they're still trying with stuff like Display Port), but fortunately the horse has left the gate and with the speed of technological progress companies are gradually finding out (are you listening, Sony?) that striking off on their own is a waste of resources and finding common ground is a much better solution.

Now, what's the truth with Windows machines?

First, a little clarification: "crash" doesn't mean what it used to. Neither does "bug". Way back when, when a computer crashed you didn't just reboot and go right on working. When a computer crashed, you lost everything and had to start over from scratch. You had to buy new and very expensive components, crack open the case and swap them out, and when you finally got the hardware going again you had to load the OS, then your program, and then start over from scratch with entering data again. Nowadays hardware rarely fails catastrophically, and even if it does it's relatively cheap, simple and painless to replace. In the early days of hard drives, they failed often and completely. Now it's rare for a hard drive to fail (unless it's a Western Digital - I haven't had a WD drive that *didn't* fail since ~1999), and there are so many truly easy ways to back up your data that if you lose any data at all, you have no one (and no thing) to blame but yourself. Back in the early days, a computer bug was an actual bug that got into the machine and shorted it out. Now it's just an inconvenient hiccup in a program that doesn't cause harm to the hardware and usually has a workaround.

The very thing that luddites claim to be the downfall of Windows is actually its strength. There are a dozen different ways to do any one thing, so if your mind works a little different than your friend's you can both do things in the way that makes the most sense to you. And that often-overlooked right button on your mouse can speed up your work drastically if you investigate those "context-sensitive menus". Keyboard shortcuts abound, which are even faster and easier and can help alleviate stress on your wrists from all that mousing. And the choice of applications is virtually limitless, with some of the best being free. And unlike files created on Apples, you can work on a Windows PC comfortable with the fact that the result can be viewed pretty much on any device anywhere in the world. Windows runs on just about anything, and drivers for obscure hardware are easy to track down. If you so wish, you can drill down into the most minute details of the way your Windows looks and works and customize it to your heart's content. You have total control. But if you just want to check your email, they're fine for that too.

Here's a news story that resulted from a typical Apple fan mentality:
Chinese Boy Sells One of His Kidneys For iPad 2

Here's a timely comic:
How to fix any computer
And another:
What it's like to own an Apple product

Proof that Apple products are more about style than substance (emphasis mine):
White iPhone finally launching worldwide tomorrow and The white iPhone: Does size matter?