There are certain cases where brand attachment is stronger, but overall brand attachment in the US is pretty weak.

Mac, yes. But I feel like being a "PC user" was never a coherent social identity. People use PCs for various reasons, usually pragmatic.

(Reflecting on it, I don't think I ever knew anyone who was "loyal" to Microsoft, or, dare I say, even particularly liked them as a company. At least certainly not the way people like Apple.)

In that sense, I feel as though Apple is the exception that proves the rule. There are really (almost) no other brands in Americans' everyday lives that elicit such a strong brand identity.

> But I feel like being a "PC user" was never a coherent social identity.

But there were people who were vocally non-Mac, dismissing it as “great for students and graphic designers”, but not a computer for real work.

(That was me in the 90’s. Of course eventually I began working on a Mac professionally.)

Yeah I could see that. I think Apple being naturally more vertically integrated (controlling the hardware and the software), was able to establish a stronger narrative around its identity early on in order to court certain types of people.