From my (limited) perspective, a lot of what made Apple great for professionals is much better software under the hood, starting from the bottom up. Looking at

From my (limited) perspective, a lot of what made Apple great for professionals is much better software under the hood, starting from the bottom up. Looking at music applications, for instance, my first impression was that the Core Audio and Core Midi APIs were a heck of a lot better for developers than the Windows equivalent (Win32 I believe for MIDI still, and ASIO for any serious audio). There's even a bigger contrast in mobile: Core Audio and Core MIDI on iOS seem to blow away Android's primitive very primitive audio APIs. (I have done actual development in neither so if anyone has feel free to chime in, this is just from skimming the specs online.) Happier developers with more rock solid foundations leads to better applications that utilize audio / MIDI (such as music apps) and therefore a better vibe among actual musicians. Apple was always known among artists that I know as the computer that Just Worked and was stable. It's actually hard to think of a show (where the musician used a laptop) where it wasn't an Apple, to be honest. Unfortunately, in the last couple of years, I've heard a fair amount of grumbling about Apple instability. I think they're in danger of losing their formally solid reputation.