There was a time, not too long ago, when Apple stuff was legitimately a worse deal than the equivalent brown-box product. It got ingrained into our cultural consciousness: Macs are overpriced, they underperform. They claim to put design first, but they still break. Not worth it unless you really like the OS.

That hasn't been true for a while, of course; Apple has made all the deals they needed to be competitive or untouchable on price and performance, and their revolutionary design philosophy has outgrown puberty and started changing the world.

But, of course, the mythos continues.