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Comment by nazar | Hacker News Reader

I expect its due to the iPhone&iPad hype. Here in my country, I didn't know that company such as Apple or something as MacPc and MacOS existed untill age 17. And I was one of the most technology eager students at school and generally considered as "geek". Now the trend you can see (At least in my country), people buying iPhone, then iPad, and then a Macbook as a "accessory". I am not exaggerating, there were several people who approached me saying, "Hey, you know the other blog about iPhone I started to follow after I bought one, I read from there something, apparently there is a different version of 'Windows' of Apple, and the computer itself looks kinda cool, do you think I should buy it?". And then the same person learns about iMac and every iProduct in market. I know lots of such people here owning every piece of iProducts just because they liked the iPhone.

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Your country is Turkmenistan? How long ago were you 17? That's an interesting perspective. I had thought that this effect you are talking about was going to occur in the U.S. 5 years ago. I think now we are fully seeing this realization across markets.

I bought my first Mac 6 months ago. I got tired of keeping up with how many gigs of ram I needed. What video card to get etc. I took the plunge and decided to trust that Apple would make good choices for me. I've not been let down. I my last Windows PC was top of the line and it would overheat from playing Netflix. My Macbook Air doesn't and I've never had a problem with it.

By the way, I've long wanted to visit your region of the world. Been to the Ukraine and Turkey but just haven't made it that far into Central Asia.

Yea, Turkmenistan. I am currently 22, so about 5 years ago. Believe me or not, I learned about Ubuntu much earlier than MacOS. People here realized about Apple when iPhone was introduced, which is around 2007 (I was 17 by that time). My friend bought MacBook Pro several months ago, and when people coming to his office see it, they still get this "What on earth is this computer, with Apple logo? Is its the same Apple as iPhone Apple one?". Please come visit our region any time, in case anyone happen to come here, email me : nazarmailbox at gmail dot com. I will gladly show you around :)

hmm your top of the line PC was overheating on playing Netflix. So hard to believe in it. could you share some info what specs was this PC, what software you used?

I agree with you that Apple make choices for you and usually they are excellent. But they come with price, you know?

This is the case in the U.S. as well. Apple products are considered chic, and people merely buy them for the fad value. Apple marketing has been very good lately - a stark change from "Think different." Their product release cycle and pricing are magnificent as well. While other computer makers are reeling from the crisis and subsequent changes in the market, Apple has created a small ecosystem that is very well designed to pull you in. Once you buy the peanut butter, you also need the jelly, the bread and the butter knife.

"Apple products are considered chic, and people merely buy them for the fad value."

Yeah. A "fad" that lasted for 12 years now, since the introduction of OS X with ever-increasing Mac/OS X/Apple sales. Are you kidding me?

Have you ever been to a conference for geeks/hackers/programmers? Most of the laptops you'll see are Macs. Go to Python, Ruby, Rails, Mongo, MySQL, Node.js and whatever conferences -- hey, even in Java conferences, despite Apple not caring about the language at all. You can also try visiting a university such as Stanford and see which are the most popular laptops there. Most people on Hacker News use a Mac too (according to a recent HN poll I saw).

You seriously believe that all those highly technical and capable people are victims of a 10-12 year old "fad"?

Btw, even Linus Torwalds (which doesn't like OS X's os tech) admitted that he wrote his autobiography on an iBook, running OS X and using Word. (Torwalds also used an Apple G5 as his desktop machine for a while, though he run Linux on it).

It seems that he currently has a MacBook Air dual booting Linux.

> Have you ever been to a conference for geeks/hackers/programmers? Most of the laptops you'll see are Macs. Go to Python, Ruby, Rails, Mongo, MySQL, Node.js and whatever conferences -- hey, even in Java conferences

Hell, go to Google I/O, half the machines there seem to be macs.

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