I read a book at one point about amassing wealth. One of the principles it said was critical was to always make contractual agreements that are generous to yourself and the other party (something like that). I think there’s something at play with apples products in that regard. Back in 2003 when I first bought a Mac privacy wasn’t a sales point for their hardware. But overtime the profit margin on apples products may be why they haven’t felt the need to “sell their users”. There’s wisdom in being willing to pay fairly up front.
My hacker side wants to get an android for all of the obvious reasons, but I really appreciate the fact that Apple's marketing interests are aligned with my privacy. I also appreciate that they are making a point of actively crusading for it. It's a fully selfish, profit-driven move on their parts, which is precisely why I like them: I don't have to trust them and their capricious future stockholders to "do the right thing", because they already make money by doing so. We're in equilibrium already. I am often disappointed by Apple's decisions, but their strategy is working on me, and I don't feel that I have a realistic alternative to protect me from hackers and over-enthusiastic government agencies (at least in the near-term future).
I agree with your assessment, I'm certainly warming up to Apple products, where I absolutely wouldn't have considering buying one just a year or two ago.
I'm still not fully convinced (I'm very comfortable in my DIY PC/Thinkpad/Linux/Motorola/Android device bubble right now), but considering I barely even play that many games or anything anymore, I just want a desktop and a laptop that let me run a web browser, Spotify, a media player and a few token games with relatively low system requirements. So far, my 7 year old DIY PC (3.3GHz Phenom II X6, 16GB RAM, Geforce GTX460) and a 5 year old refurb Thinkpad T420 are both doing quite well, so I am quite unlikely to spend the required money to get into the Apple ecosystem.
I do like playing around with old Mac stuff like System 6 and Mac OS 8/9 in emulators, but that's not really the same thing :-)
Yeah, my 7 year old middle-of-the-line MacBook pro is still kicking, so I haven't had to seriously think about upgrades. One of the annoying things is that I won't be able to make my next MacBook last that long because I won't be able to replace broken stock parts or upgrade ram/storage. I appreciate the tradeoffs inherent in modularity/replaceability vs. portability, but a huge part of the appeal of old macs was their ridiculous lifetimes, which I don't expect will be as long going forward.
I mean, my 2010 MBP has 16GB of ram and a 512GB SSD. The benchmark stats are awful for CPU/GPU/memory/storage speeds, but it's pretty pathetic that 7 years later I can't even choose to get a new mac with more memory.
Apple is in dire need of giving their entire lineup a serious kick in the pants, they've been way too focused on iPhones and iPads. The Mac Mini is crap, the Mac Pro is crap, the iMac is middling at best (the new iMac Pro looks reasonably sweet, but the price...), the Macbooks are severely spec-limited, it's just a mess.
They've painted themselves into a "thinness at all costs" sort of corner with the Macbooks, and they've have to go back on that and make them slightly thicker again, if they want to upgrade them. Last time they were backed into a serious corner (G5 PowerPC being completely unsuitable for mobile use and disappointing performance-wise), they took a chance and switched to Intel. They're going to have to mess with some important core design tenets this time.
For the desktop line, a new non-stupid Mac Pro will go a long way. They also need to seriously refresh the Mac Mini, because it's just a piece of junk right now.
Don't forget the upgrade factor. I find it totally ridiculous that you're forced to buy external enclosures for pro-grade equipment instead of just having a nice, toolless access panel for upgrades. I miss the tower Mac Pro, which looked beautiful partly because it looked like a practical, industrial tool designed for easy physical access. Not everything needs to look physically seamless...
