This, or at least the breakout that led to this, has been achieved on the strength of product and user experience. Apple's tech isn't really much better than i

This, or at least the breakout that led to this, has been achieved on the strength of product and user experience. Apple's tech isn't really much better than its rivals, except in a few areas like inputs and haptics. Its high performance ARM cores are impressive but there are other impressive ARM cores and it's a very recent development anyway. Until a few years ago they were "good enough for a phone" but not rivals of Intel or AMD for anything serious. In fact I seem to remember Qualcomm Snapdragon chips being better on some metrics a couple years ago. The thing that made Apple really stand out was the polish and attention to detail in its product. This has two parts. One is the product being good. The other is the striking absence of tacked-on crap features and shitware. I recently switched to an iPhone from Android due to privacy issues and the thing that immediately struck me about the iPhone was the lack of shitware preloaded on the device. It did not come preloaded with Google Spy... err... Play Services or Facebook, let alone a bunch of Samsung and carrier apps that are surely encrusted with spyware. I can even uninstall most Apple apps that I don't want! Same goes for the Mac. A new Mac does not show you ads. Its equivalent of the start menu isn't full of loot box games and other shitware of the sort found on Windows or Android tablet or "laplet" (or is it "tabtop?") devices. On the Mac I can uninstall pretty much anything except system apps (well you could but that might be problematic). You can even uninstall Safari and replace it wholly with Firefox or Chrome AFAIK. Going way, way back, when I first tried an early 'oughts Mac I was struck by the lack of the worthless but prominent "Thinkvantage" button found on my Thinkpad or any other obvious committee tack-ons. The design was clean. This same lack of shit is what made the original Google break out way back in the early 'oughts. Back then most search engine web sites looked like the home pages of online casinos. Google had a blank and a button that said "search." The instant I saw it, I never again returned to another search engine. Apple has occasionally gone too far with "clean" or "thin and light," but if you are going to err I'd err on that side. Erring on the side of cruft and shitware is much worse. Take note people.