Thread is in wrong forum! Needs to be in GD, GH or mobile phones.
When people say it's because they're jealous, that just makes the Apple users seem more smug. It's not because people are jealous for goodness sakes. Anyone could buy an iPod or whatever iwotsit really, especially most people on these forums, but they choose not to. Is it because the hardware is no good? Not really, despite being quite locked down, it's powerful enough and reliable enough, plus the designs are very good on the most part. It's about the attitude of Apple towards the world, and this does rub off on some of the owners (a minority are vocal about it). Apple are trying to sell a better life to people, not just bits of electronics and plastic, and they're doing it in a more evocative and overwhelming way than anything the general public have seen before. Some people are like 'nice, I could have me some of that' and others are like 'what is this?'. So I think it's about how people respond to that as well. Not to mention the petty lawsuits that make it into the press, although no company is truly innocent here, but Apple are pushing their luck in some circumstances. This doesn't look good to a lot of people. Most people don't care.
The fact that you're supposedly buying into more than a product, in almost a religious sense at times, is alone enough to put off a lot of people who aren't as materialistic as others. Sure, other manufacturers try to advertise in that way, but it comes off as tongue in cheek and generally isn't taken seriously. With Apple, something is different. Like they genuinely believe this isn't a piece of electronics, but something much more.
The reality isn't anywhere near as grand of course, and a lot of people who've ended up with their products for other reasons have trouble understanding why some people don't buy into it as they don't see the products and company in the same way.
Then there are a few other things. Price, although not prohibitive, it's as close as possible and usually more expensive than the competition. Restrictions, limitations, compared to the open source software that's out there, and even MS software, sometimes OSX, iOS can feel quite difficult to manouver on. This is the real reason why I don't buy the products, as I like to tweak, customise and so on. That's part of the fun for me and it's just not possible in the same way in Apple's walled garden. Also, every time I've had to use OSX it's been frustrating as some places/companies use it but most use Windows so it's another skillset to learn for not a lot of reward, and when using iOS and iPhones, especially trying to get them to play with windows has been a nightmare for me recently. They're only easy to use if you have basic demands, otherwise you need to learn a lot about them before being able to go forward much further.
