Before that i don't think most anyone outside of USA even knew Apple existed unless you were interested in media production in some sense.
And that in turn lead to a feedback loop because certain celebrities would show up with an iPod (mostly noticed because of those white wires) because they themselves walk the media circles.
Similarly Apple could get the labels and studios to agree to distribute via iTunes because of that inside track in the industry.
And that in turn was what bootstrapped iPhone beyond being a fancy screened featurephone (though whoever talked Jobs down from going "nuclear" on the gray market jailbreakers was perhaps the true genius there).
But that all this then produce the effect that if you slap a fruit logo on a object peoples interest and appreciation is still worrying. What comes to mind is the comedy caricature of an "art critic" that can deliver a spiel of big words that means crap all upon closer scrutiny.
Another interpretation might be that 'people pay outrageous prices' because Apple's products are of higher quality/last longer, which makes the long term price lower than similar products of competitors; For example, i am still using an iPhone 5 (September 2012) which runs the latest iOS version smoothly...
you know that because (i assume) you have the technical knowledge. Average people don't know which products of which brand may or may not be well built. But they do now that Apple products are generally of high quality.
Apple being of whatever quality has no bearing on the quality of anything else. Not only do other companies match, many of them exceed quality of apple.
"But these are considerably less than what you already had paid for a laptop!" -> "Yeah, but they're not Apple, and when people see Apple, they know you have a good laptop". That branding was literally worth almost $1k to my colleague...
Apple users seems to be the only ones that even care about "resale" of their computers, almost like they are investments rather than tools.
I upgrade my PC hardware by throwing away/recycling the old one and buying a new one.
I upgrade my Apple hardware by selling the old one on Craigslist and then buying a new one.
In both cases, I spend about $1000 net each time. In the PC case, that's +$0, -$1000. In the Apple case, that's +$1000, -$2000. Either way, it's -$1000 net.
If you prefer Apple products but think they're "too expensive" because they cost ~$1000 more, this is why people tend to disagree. They paid that ~$1000 once, as an "entrance fee" for their first laptop, but they don't have to pay it again.
TL/DR - only Apple devices HAVE a resale value.
Anyone want to buy a barely used XPS 15 (top spec)?
It wasn't about 'mental sifting', or 'flexy laptops' or any of the other excuses people will try to insert. It was about paying for the brand recognition. He'd gone 'wow' at my X1 carbon, and gone 'wow' at another colleagues XPS. But he balked on price because of brand recognition, not because "a single product line is easier to deal with than a choice, so I'm willing to pay almost 50% more".
I certainly agree that Apple's greatest asset is their brand reputation.
In other words: if you buy a $3000 gaming PC, you're a weird nerd who cares too much about computers. If you buy a $3000 MBP, you're a professional and a connoisseur. Your friend wanted a $3000 computer (probably because, to be frank, they are a "weird nerd" who can put $3000 of hardware to good use), but they didn't want to be labelled as such.
Apple products generally have a high resale value like BMWs.
My guess is that there's just not enough profit in it. Monitors last a really long time, and while people like your friend will ooh and ahh over them, that doesn't necessarily translate into sales, and since they don't need to be replaced every year, they won't have the built-in profit that their phones have. It's probably the same with their WiFi access points.
I have another Linksys "premium" home router ($200-300) but the WiFi died on that too, but it lives on as an OpenWRT home router but with WiFi disabled. The Apple WiFi routers also lived on for a while with WiFi disabled but acting as TimeMachine backups. Then the disks died and I couldn't be arsed to pry open the case with a hair drier to get at the disk inside and replace it. So for my home, the setup went from Apple all-in-one combo gear with routing, WiFi and backup disk, to specialized functions for WiFi (cheapest off the shelf), routing (openwrt), and backup disks (standard NAS hardware). (For TimeMachine.)
I hope my 15" Macbook lasts for a really long time, because when it's dead I don't know if Apple has any Macbook I want to have. But that's tomorrows sorrows..., no use worrying about that until the time comes. (I guess I can always fall back to Linux and some PC laptop.)
Just beacuse you paid a bunch of money for it and flashed it with a better firmware doesn't make it good hardware, and custom firmwares often have poor support (and, on more than a few occasions, worse performance) than the default firmwares optimized by the manufacturer for the specific hardware they have.
The fact that you have to keep buying new hardware tells me that you have lousy hardware and should step up to proper hardware rather than expensive consumer-grade stuff.
My work expensive Cisco access points are so reliable I've never seen some of them in 10 years (they're above the dropped ceiling)
What the heck are you doing with your WiFi gear to have these problems? I've used all kinds of cheap-o routers over the years, and never had problems with them overheating. Are you living in the desert without A/C or something? My current router is just a cheap TP-Link dual-band I got used on Ebay; it runs DD-WRT and has been working fine for 1.5 years hiding behind my sofa. Before that, I had a cheap Cisco/Linksys e1000 I got used and ran DD-WRT on for probably 3 years. I gave it away to someone, and last I heard it still works just fine. Before that I had some D-Link I think, which I replaced because a firmware update prevented my network print jobs from going through (obviously not a hardware problem). I've also had (about 4 years ago, for work) a Cisco/Linksys dual-band which worked great, and a Cisco enterprise AP which was very reliable though the IOS UI was the worst thing I've ever seen in my life. Honestly, your post is the first time I've heard anyone complain about WiFi routers having overheating problems.
Maybe I'm luckier because I usually run DD-WRT and set the transmit strength a bit lower, but I've only done that with the last couple of routers.
When an Apple loving friend came around I witnessed first hand the value of branding. She was entranced by this cool black Apple monitor and wanted to know where I had got it from. I'm pretty sure she would have paid at least $100 over the Dell price for such a cool Apple product. She was incredibly disappointed that it was a trick when she found out. The monitor no longer had any value in her eyes even though it was exactly the same as before.
Apple can charge outrageous prices for their products, and people love them despite/because of that. Can't understand why they'd stop making monitors.