Some older relatives asked for a computer recommendation. I told them a thousand reasons why a MacBook Air (at that moment) would be perfect for them. They went to Best Buy and came home with the Dellpaq thing that the guy there told them had better specs.

Honestly, it kinda let me off the hook. "Sorry, I don't know the first thing about Windows[0]. But if you have questions, I'm sure the Best Buy fella will be happy to walk you through it." They never have liked the dumb thing since they got it, but hey, I did my best to lead that horse to water.

[0]I do, but they don't know that, and anyone who tells them's getting throatpunched.

The worst thing about those cheaper "Best Buy" Windows machines is that they're heavily laden with all kinds of software making the PC extremely slow from the start. I just don't understand who they can get away with it.

The desktop support people agreed at my last job said MACs was more expensive upfront but less hardware faults and RMA for devices that were dead on delivery. They also had less support calls after new users learned the platform. The business said hell no we would rather pay less upfront.

I think Apple's era of unreliable laptops were the ones with Butterfly keyboards. So many issues back then, but they did a complete 180 once they reintroduced the magic keyboard and then Apple Silicon.

Apple Intel laptop + a butterfly keyboard was the absolute gutter tier experience. Not only it was slow and ran hot, but after a few months a random key would get stuck and stop working.

Also touch bar, also was all USB-C at a time when there was 0 adoption (2016). I went out of my way to buy a 2015 model instead, held up for 10 years.

I was gifted a Touch Bar and bought an M1 air when they came out. It was a night a day difference. Fan speed and throttling killed the experience and Touch Bar was not good.

I agree that sucked, and I fixed a few of them myself instead of sending to Apple. Got quite good at it.

Now Mac is almost the same if not cheaper up front, and in the long run too. It's a wild thing to see.

I got my first ipad a year or two ago. It took me many tries over about an hour to setup the apple account I needed to log in to the device. I wish I had documented the process, because it's so different than what people typically claim about Apple ease of use.

Interesting experience. I set up 2 iPad pros, basically one shot experience that took a few minutes.

Even the first one I owned was straightforward

Yup. Around 2005 my 83 year old grandpa decided he wanted to learn how to use a computer.

I told him to just get a Mac- it’s a little more expensive but the user experience is unparalleled, and the Genius Bar offers (do they still?) classes in using your computer if needed.

Never had to help him with buggy software, crashes, etc. It just worked.

My grandmother - at 104, was still rocking her iPad! Sending / receiving emails, doing FaceTime, reading the news.