From a business standpoint, Apple is a company others can only hope to imitate with lesser success. Most would be happy with that.
From an investor standpoint, it's tough to find any tech stock that's performed better since the market bottomed out in 2008.
As a market leader, they have been defining the tech trends other companies are quick to follow from the iPod to the iPhone and now the iPad. Say what you will about those devices as an anti-Apple biased observer, but the simple facts are they are able to sell their products at the profit margins they set because users simply prefer the experience.
It's not because the consumers are all "sheep" and it's not because they're "too stupid" to know any better or figure out how to use Windows (most Apple owners likely use a Windows based PC at the office; using Windows is meant to be easy, not rocket science), nor is it because there are tens of millions of elitist douchebag hipsters buying all their products (sorry, but as a niche within a niche there simply aren't enough to drive the market).
What has the majority of the PC market in terms of operating system usage? Windows. By a landslide multiple times over. So by this narrow mentality if you use Windows, you are a sheep, regardless of whether you build or buy your own PC.
By this same narrow line of thinking, if you don't source indivdual components and build your own PC in an effort to shave as much off the cost of a PC as possible with the best configuration possible, you are an "idiot," meaning anyone who buys a pre-configured computer from Asus, HP, Dell, etc. is an "idiot."
Wrong and wrong.
Oh yes, and while we're at it, anyone who buys any brand product for style, personal preference, aesthetics or anything other than basic utility is an "idiot."
Also wrong.
You have to wonder who's really being elitist here with some of the attitudes towards Apple and the consumers who buy their products.
And taking the latest example; if the iPad is such a horrendous idea and product, why is every major company and their grandmother rushing to market in an attempt to capture marketshare? If the iOS was such a horrendous concept, why was Android ever developed? And why does MS continue to try (without success) to push products like Zune, Win7 Mobile, etc. etc.?
