Ok, gotta jump in on this one. Yes, Apple products are overpriced for what you get and yes, there are hardware issues (and OS) that occur with a percentage of their products and yes, engineering could be a little more responsive to known issues and yes, supported peripheral devices are fewer than PC offerings.
However every other manufacturer is plagued with these issues as well (hello Samsung) except for the overpriced bit. They are overpriced primarily because of the easily exploitable fan base but there is a reason folks are loyal to their Macs:
- A mostly reliable and consistant OS that is mostly immune and secure without need of extra protection and system resources
- It's a closed system - Apple only supports a limited amount of hardware which means fewer drivers are needed and they are easier to keep current and harmonious with the OS. This is a blessing or a curse if the suppliers and developers don't do their part to keep things current but same with other OSs. Microsoft and their vendors must somehow support an uncountable number of peripherals, drivers and software products - much of which just expands the risk of security vulnerabilities and 3rd party drivers and software conflict with each other and the OS more frequently than in OSX.
- They hold their value
- They are innovators for better or worse: Firewire, Displayport and Lightning are all tech that other companies could not adapt as early (back to point 2)
- Apple really does do a good job of keeping older machines able to upgrade the OS or security updates (until hardware dependencies necessitate otherwise)
- The above point does not apply to their mobile devices
I love the
Louis Rossmann videos too, I've learned how to fix a lot of gear watching them and agree with his frustration with Apples lack of disclosure and resource sharing. I've worked with Apple products for the past 30 years and have been repairing, modding and hacking them for the past 10. I've also worked with other OSs too and tend to prefer Linux over Win, I know how to code for those platforms better than how to use them though so still keep an old machine that tripple boots XP, Win7 and Ubuntu so I can hash out code using now ancient but still effective tools.
Let me go back to point 3 though. A 2010 Macbook with a C2D & 8GB of RAM still has an average selling price of $250 compared to a similar Dell at $80 - both are able to run the current OS and will have equal downfalls doing so but there's actually a market for the Macbook.
Vintagey iPhones are even better when a 2013 16GB 5s will still somehow fetch $70 on average - just try that with your 6 year old Android device. Hell, you can buy a new one for that....
Let's face it though, 90% of people who still purchase laptop or desktop computers do very little beyond email, web surfing & streaming and maybe some some light word processing. There is no benefit to them having a machine newer than 8 years old really and would be better served having a phablet of some sort. Even the DSP many on these forums implement can run reasonably well on these older machines.
End of rant. Not trying to defend Apple here really - just explaining why they have their place in computing world. In fact the company has alienated many of their greatest advocates and buyers in recent years not offering new updated desktop machines and restricting the OS even further to power users who actually know how to use computers.