Enthusiast = Saving over $1,000 building your own computer that is faster practically any Mac you can buy AND saving more money because you know hoe to fix its problems instead of paying Apple to do it AND saving more money by gradually upgrading as you go unlike buying a whole new $1,500 Mac.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Apple-Mac-PC-Marketshare-macbook,8332.html#xtor=RSS-181

How interesting.

I think your intense desire for twisting words into a suitable mac-bashing argument is blinding you.

There's plenty people (arguably, most of consumers) who are not enthusiasts yet that doesnt preclude them from owning a wintel pc. In fact, you are implying only non-enthusiasts would own a Mac, ignoring how Mac OSX being a full-blast UNIX compliant OS is more suited for enthusiast use than a mere wintel pc, although for these types a linux (or other unix-like OS like FreeBSD) is probably their first choice.

Additionally, many of these non-enthusiasts on wintel do need to pay to get their computers fixed. Again, your wording implies no Mac user can fix problems by himself/herself. Considering the free customer support Apple offers to consumers at their stores, it might be actually cheaper for a non-enthusiast to keep their Mac in shape than their wintel box.

There's plenty of people being ripped-off daily by buying shoddy wintel boxes/laptops, but hey they don't know any better. Macs might be expensive, but non-enthusiast consumers generally get in return a better customer experience which is one of the reasons why Apple sales are surging. You might hate-dislike-whatever Apple as much as you want, but the truth is in every customer satisfaction poll out there Macs are usually on the top or near it. Of course it's easier just to say smugs with too much money just buy Apple since that's the official party line but just as Mercedes customers are willing to pay a premium for a better experience, so do many Apple customers.

How interesting indeed.

No, not Mac hatred.  Just a snappy comeback to offset your irrational summation that PC entusiasts are wasting their time learning about the expensive machine they operate instead of being illiterate of the technology and paying unwarranted premiums.

If you're going to say something as imbecilic as insiuating that it's a waste of time to save money and become knowledgable then you should expect a strong rebuttal.

Irrational? Depends on how much you value your time. You are being imbecilic ignoring the cost of opportunity. Learning something takes time and possibly money. Choices, choices... spend time and effort learning the innards of computing and windows or practicing my editing skills so my social and socio-economic status improves. It's exactly the same with the car. You have the choice to either become a half-assed grease monkey or working up the... how they call it... oh yeah, the greasy pole.

Considering an average 3-year lifespan for the computer and assuming a 1.000$ apple overprice, it comes off as 300$ per year. However increasing your knowledge on your actual field of work will yield more than 300$/year. Of course for people working within certain IT environments both interests overlap, but that's a small subset of the population.

Interestingly (and this is anecdotal evidence I know) many of the people I know who chose macs did so because they just "work" and can focus on the actual tasks at hand, rather than on the tool they are using to perform such tasks.

You are operating under a very narrow mindset and that hurts your perspectives on issues like this one.

Irrational? Depends on how much you value your time. You are being imbecilic ignoring the cost of opportunity. Learning something takes time and possibly money. Choices, choices... spend time and effort learning the innards of computing and windows or practicing my editing skills so my social and socio-economic status improves. It's exactly the same with the car. You have the choice to either become a half-assed grease monkey or working up the... how they call it... oh yeah, the greasy pole.

Considering an average 3-year lifespan for the computer and assuming a 1.000$ apple overprice, it comes off as 300$ per year. However increasing your knowledge on your actual field of work will yield more than 300$/year. Of course for people working within certain IT environments both interests overlap, but that's a small subset of the population.

Interestingly (and this is anecdotal evidence I know) many of the people I know who chose macs did so because they just "work" and can focus on the actual tasks at hand, rather than on the tool they are using to perform such tasks.

You are operating under a very narrow mindset and that hurts your perspectives on issues like this one.

Now you are suggesting that the time afforded to learn about your expensive investment is wasted because you could be using that time to learn more about your career field?   Do you have no hobbies?  Do you have any friends?  Do you spend every waking hour of your life investing it under the course of furthering your knowledge in your set career field?  Narrow focus, indeed.

How sad it must be.   To distill yourself down to one knowledgeable topic.   Such limitations remind me of robots and their dedicated tasks to do just one thing in their existence such as vehicle assembly.   Why is it wrong to become knowledgeable in many fields?