> I don't remember people thinking they were cooler or had better taste because they owned an Apple II. I think this was an evolution in the image that happened after the "second coming" of Steve Jobs and the introduction of the iMac.

There was quite a bit of pre-Jobs snobbery. RISC-vs-CISC was one, "pro designers and artists [aka people with taste] use these!" was another common one, "have fun with DOS and viruses" was one...

It was born out of badly losing on marketshare for years. It was also somewhat invisible if you weren't an avid Mac user or Mac hater since at 3% marketshare or whatever, most people didn't know many people to hear it from in the first place!

From what I saw, the iMac/Aqua ("Fisher Price" if you weren't a fan) era didn't even turn around the cool factor for the general public nearly as much as the Intel Macs - "now I can just boot Windows if I have to, at least" to get a lot more curious people to give Macs a shot. Then they were cool for a while. Now they're common enough that I don't think "cool" is the right word vs just "pricey/status-y".