Furthermore, if you’re one of the few who do know and it bothers you, you can turn it off.

Furthermore, if you're one of the majority who don't know, you cannot turn it off when it affects you.

But that’s beside the point. If you don’t know, you won’t avoid Apple products because of it.

Exactly. Today was the first day when I knew this was possible. If I had been buying a computer a month ago, this would not have been a factor in my calculations whatsoever, because I didn't know it was even a possibility to consider.

A month from now? Different story.

FYI, both Windows and Chrome (to an extent) can do this too. Windows will phone home to smartscreen scan downloaded executables, and Chrome checks every download against virustotal (owned by Google since 2013) for viruses to warn that software is malicious, and I've been burned by this a few times when a download wouldn't complete for multiple minutes due to this scan.

You still can run the same program checked by windows though, by opting in to use the program. And definitely you still run other programs as the check only occurs on installation, and not every time after running it.

And they don't know because the hidden source of the binaries their overpriced hardware is running. So users can't inspect the source and look for hidden "gems" like this one, let alone fix those intentional bugs themselves - not just due to not having the source, but the hardware refusing to boot anything not signed by the blessed key of Apple.

Are Macbooks really overpriced? A Microsoft Surface or a Razer laptop cost roughly the same price.

Razer laptops come with the latest and greatest in terms of GPU/CPUs, plus they usually feature things like high-refresh displays, full RGB keyboards etc. They're still overpriced, mind you - since you can find comparable laptops for literally half the price - but at least they have the powerful hardware in them to somewhat justify their steep pricing. Similarly to Apple though, their pricetags are heavily inflated by the Razer branding.

Can't comment on the Surface, never looked into them much.

"I'll do YOU one better." /Drax

I know, and I _want_ this. In general, it effectively eliminates the possibility that I'm going to install malware.