I like building my own stuff so what you said suits me. Unfortunately if you own a company with say three hundred plus staff building your own PCs seems a bit long winded. PC building is more of a hobbyist thingy.

Also not everyone cares about building their own PCs anymore than making their own clothes...come to think of it, even making your own dinner is on the downturn, with the microwave and takeaway  becoming more and more the main option as our lives are taken up with other things.

Not everyone wants a big box either. Some people want a quiet computer that takes a minimum space. This requires special engineering to get all the components to fit and stay cool.

And when building, occaisionally you'll get some kind of incompatibility that will have you pulling your hair out. I would pay anything to avoid that aggravation.

It doesn't take nearly as long as that- maybe 2 hours. And its worth it when those two hours save can save you anywhere between 1-3 grand plus you get a much better quality machine.

No way are you assembling a complete computer and loading an OS in two hours. No freaking way. I've built more computers than I can count and it's nearly a two hour process just getting everything unboxed, bolted together, plugged in, and assembled into the box.

Then there's the OS, drivers, optimization, file transfer, software, etc. etc. etc.

And I can buy a RAID server from Dell with ECC RAM for way less than $3k so there's no way you're saving that much on building your own box.

And you can walk away from it while they install, and do something else.

As long as software prompts ask you to hit enter <5 minutes, you're not going to go far and you're not going to get much of anything done.

Not to mention if there is a problem you could be ripping the hair out of your head for days trying to figure out which component is bad. You also have to spend time ordering the components, making sure they are compatible, dealing with separate warranties. If you order accidently order the wrong part, you have to repackage it, send it back, get a new one, which is more time that most people don't have.

That's what I look at it as.  I do still want to make my own custom pc some day, but we'll see what constitutes a PC 5 years down the road when I'll actually have the money to put towards a potential process that could wind up failing miserably for me.

All i will say is that Apple brings any hate upon itself. I have never gotten angrier at any advertising than at those idiotic "I'm a Mac..." commercials. Apple should have been sued for false advertising on a few of those (and apparently was sued in Europe, where the standards on false advertising are stricter), and it just cemented the fact that they were trying to appeal to hipster elitist douchebags or people who aspired to be them

I have never owned an Apple product, but that's mostly because i see no need for MP3 players or smartphones (or barely cell-phones at all) period, and prefer the better value gotten with PCs, but i don't hate the products and what they can or can't do, but i do hate the marketing, the corporate culture, and the fanboys, and completely sympathize with the blind Apple haters because i feel the rage they feel

As for why the media absolutely fawns over it, i would chalk it up to the media being those clever snarky hipster douchebags that Apple clearly likes to pander to, based on those flaming commercials

Maybe because they like Apple?