Um, I don't use a Mac because it's cool. I use a Mac because I like its interface and it's Unix inside.
I, for one, cannot resist a system that installs /bin/zsh by default.
> Um, I don't use a Mac because it's cool. I use a Mac because I like its interface and it's Unix inside. I, for one, cannot resist a system that installs /bin/zsh by default.
Oh, I'm of precisely the same position. I'm primarily a Unix-head, have been since the mid-80's.
I didn't say that the reason, or the main reason, people bought Macs is because they're "cool". I said the aura of high quality and superior industrial design that Apple has worked so hard (and successfully) to establish, would deteriorate if they started trying to address the bottom-feeder Windows market.
The Mac is different, and to survive it has to stay different. There is no benefit to Apple, to make the Mac like a Windows PC. And to reach that same price point, it would have to be more or less the same.
Apple doesn't make low-end products. Period. Their entire aspect in the marketplace would change, and suffer, if they stopped being the mid-to-high-end product line, and addressed the mass low-end market. And (my original point), the public perception that Apple is "cool" would suffer damage.