>>It's worth investigating why, in such a feature-driven industry, a product with good marketing but so lacking in features is so popular. The arguably best UI

>>It's worth investigating why, in such a feature-driven industry, a product with good marketing but so lacking in features is so popular. The arguably best UI around is a killer feature. That is something which generates love. Great usability makes the UI just "disappear", you don't think about it. Just look at which phone users really manage to use them for data traffic (and the carriers' trouble with that). This isn't unique to Apple. I buy pens (Pilot G-tec C4) which break really easily. That is not really smart, but their thin writing is a killer feature for me. I buy them a dozen at a time without even cursing. Disclaimer: I don't really care if I use Ubuntu or Mac. Edit: bensummers made it clearer and better.