But a lot of mac users ARE buying computers with the same criteria that a clotheshorse uses when buying a pair of jeans.

I think that there are two groups of mac users, the above mentioned and the crowd that use it because it is a nice gui on top of a unix based opereating system, allowing for a lot of control.

The latter, of which you are probably a member, is a minority though. This is why you have to read about it time and again. For the larger part of the mac base it is true.

It also happens to be a pretty stable, fast and usable OS for people who don't care or even know about the underlying BSD OS.

which is incidentally really great if you're a teenage girl.

No blue screen of death or "no axc45 module available please refer to section 56b of the msdn manual for further analysis" dialog boxes.

You're being downvoted, but it's true. Going to the Apple Store here in Columbia MD makes me kind of ashamed to be a Mac user right now. There are literally crowds of teenage girls flocking in to dote over how "cute" the hardware is... and not a whole lot else; both in terms of clients or the merits they see in Apple products.

It seems like 90% of the Mac user base right now is as clueless as trolls say they are. This was not the case 5 years ago.

Isn't that a good thing?

There are always going to be teenagers who know (and care) nothing about computers. If they happen to like Macs because they think it's cute, what's wrong with that? They get a stable, usable system. What would you prefer they get?

"No, you can't play with it; you won't enjoy it on as many levels as I do... Mm-hai bw-ha whoa-hoa. The colors, children! Mwa-ha-lee!" --Professor Frink

I agree that most non-tech people are much more concerned about form factor. I recently tried to explain to a colleague why a MacBook Pro is faster than a MacBook with the same topline specs - his eyes glazed over after about four seconds, and he said he just 'liked the look' of the black MacBook better. You have to hand it to their marketing guys - the greatest illustration of their success is that they've persuaded teenage girls to care at all.

Very accurate comment - and for Apple this is not a bad thing. They have managed to create brilliant products, and even more brilliant marketing. Their greatest insight is that for a lot of users a computer is just another gadget, and they realise that consmuer electronics are sold on looks and lifestyle - not on technical spec. The real genius, of course, is to tie everything together so that the teenage girls will have to own both the iphone, the ipod, the macbook, and whatever else they come up with.

The market is huge - there are a lot more teenage girls out there than there are hackers...

> You're being downvoted,

How do you downvote? I've not seen that option.

You can downvote when you reach a certain level of karma. I think it's 200.

I believe the majority of OS X hackers fall into the latter category. I know I sure like my nice GUI ontop of this unix 3.0 OS... not to mention quality hardware build, nice screen resolution, ports galore, decent battery life, web cam, and nice keyboard buttons...