I’m an apple user, though the last piece of hardware I bought from them was an iPad 3, so perhaps I’m not a fanboy. Growing up, my Dad had an Apple IIe, then a IIgs. then a succession of Macs. And so, my iMac is in a long tradition…
The Apple II was distinguished by the “evangelist”, the user who was attached to the Apple II when the Commodore 64 seemed to have better games; the IBM, better business acceptance; and the Mac had an altogether better user interface. The evangelist agitated for schools, friends, and programmers to climb aboard the Apple II bandwagon-- because mass acceptance would lead to better hardware and software availability. When Richard Garriott announced that Ultima VI would be a IBM only game, we were just crushed. He had even demoed his game to our Apple II user’s group, (Washington Apple Pi) so it felt like a massive betrayal. Of course, Garriott knew where his bread was buttered-- the IBM/VGA/Soundblaster combination was clearly the future of gaming.
So it is with iOS-- Apple has to produce a better Operating system than google and a better tablet/phone/next generation device of the week than Sony or Samsung or Microsoft or whomever because Apple needs developers to think “Of course we’ll be developing our apps and our peripherals for Apple’s machines-- they are just that cool.”
