Two tropes get trotted out whenever that tired old topic comes up: 1. Apple deludes people with great marketing. 2. Apple makes great products. (How does tha

Two tropes get trotted out whenever that tired old topic comes up: 1. Apple deludes people with great marketing. 2. Apple makes great products. (How does that relate to Apple fans being crazy? The underlying idea is that if a company’s products are attractive for many people – for whatever reason – there are bound to be at least a few crazies among those who find the product attractive [0]. See also: Star Wars, Harry Potter, Wii, Justin Bieber.) Any ideas on how to empirically test that? I can only think of two right now but there have to be more: 1. How often and for how long are Apple products actually used after they are bought and how does that compare to other, similar products? 2. How do objective metrics for product quality compare to similar products? (That’s extremely tricky. What matters more and what less? What’s objective? What about all that subjective stuff?) [0] I think it is rather obvious that not all Apple “fans” are also crazy enough to stand in line for hours. Apple sold 16 million iPads during the last year and only a tiny minority of those 16 million iPads were bought by people who are crazy enough to stand in line for, say, more than two hours. Most Apple customers are very likely neither fans nor crazy.