[stoppingdown]

 

It's not the hardware only, which is overly expensive, it's also connectivity, integration and elegant simplicity. I hate to defend Apple, but more I hate to read posts from people about Apple who have no single clue what's the core experience.

 

With some differences, I second this point. When Apple announced the iPhone, they said they invented the smartphone. It was a false assertion, since there were already the previous generation smartphones. But they transformed it with its user interface and design.

 

 

However, toni-a has a point, because marketing really plays a relevant role. Much of that usability is rather "coolness", elegance of design, not really something that you need. 

 

BTW, there's also a pernicious trend. They are constantly removing things from the shell of their products, which is a design trend, but now it's clashing with usability. For instance, my latest laptop misses the small LEDs which indicated the battery charge, and it's a feature that I found useful. The Disk Utility of Mac OS X has become an almost useless tool: less features, they're hiding the fact that some hidden partitions are always created (and I might want to delete them), and also less functional (for some reason it's completely unable to unmount and check one of my volumes, so I have to use the command line).