do you remember the 90s?

man, everyone thought apple was stupid. something you'd only use if you got it for free.

I mean, the same complaints were voiced then as now (e.g. it's essentially a closed hardware platform) but unlike now, they didn't have the upside. They weren't "cool"

At the time, most people had used apples because apple gave computers away to schools. Really, I think it was a bad strategy, because we all came away with the idea that apples were slow, outdated, broken garbage which couldn't run anything more interesting than 'Oregon trail'

so, uh, yeah. I'm personally still not a fan of apple. but I can certainly say they didn't always have the masses of loyal fans they have now. (I mean, they had fans, but they were few, and generally looked upon with the pity one has for BeOS or Ameiga fans.) This large and "cool" apple fandom is actually a pretty recent development. Now, i'm way out of touch, and most of the people I meet are *NIX users, so I wouldn't really know, but as far as I can tell, it really started with the advent of OS-x.

edit: as others point out, my point of view is probably a little different... as I'm a technical person, and apple did not really start appealing to the technical crowd until os-X.

Um, Apple' has always concentrated on well-designed, top-end products. They have always charged huge margins. The drum beat of their marketing throughout the '90s was "our products are better designed". And they were. Even the "boring" beige pizza-box Macs from 1995 were amazingly well put together, both hardware and software.

What's changed is that the good design has moved from the heart of their products out to the skin. Today an iPhone looks great (really, great) but you can't even change the battery! How far have Apple come from the days when they cared so much about their users that they even thought to put little pull-out feet on the inside, so that when you opened it up to change the hard-drive everything unfolded with an easy grace?

Far enough to be far more successful, it would seem.

Yes I remember the 90s, I was working for the later part of that decade on and off.

I encountered a number of die hard Apple fans during that time who simply wouldn't consider another computer other than a Mac and continued to buy whatever Apple made. That was before the iMac really hit. No technical person I knew would use a Mac in the 90s, which they more than fixed with OSX in the 2000s.

Numerous computer companies failed in the 90s though Apple didn't, I had thought it was due to that loyal fan base, but maybe not? (though clearly they still needed a turn around when Steve Jobs returned)

I would say it started with translucent iMacs, that caught them up and got riding the hipster wave until now.

Apple's advantage is marketing to people who respond to their message, thus CREATING loyal fans.

Unless you're suggesting that any company named "Apple" would have those fans ... in what sense is a massive base of loyal fans an unfair advantage?

They (we) are loyal fans for good reason.

My use of the term 'unfair' was in reference to the way the term was used in the article. I thought this would be perfectly clear to everyone, since everyone would have read the article.