That you can read a thread like this and describe the sleep LED behavior as "frivolity" nicely encapsulates not only why Apple does well, but why a certain segment of its competition will never grasp why it keeps getting beaten.
Apple can't do well for that segment of the market until those people start to take Apple seriously. Right now, the prevailing opinion among Apple detractors seems to be that all the little touches are "fluff" and polish that don't add up to any monetary value at all.
Evidence of this abounds: my favorite example is the multitouch touchpad that Apple uses. If somebody is saying something good about a pointing device on a non-Apple laptop, odds are good that they've never spent time with Apple's touchpad. It's that much better, but if you haven't used it and you don't trust Apple or anybody who uses Apple products, you'll probably never assign it more than about $5 of value, when experienced users would easily value it at ten times that. (That's why it isn't insane for apple to release a standalone touchpad for $70).
Fortunately for Apple, far more people have been willing to try the iPhone than have been willing to try their computers, and many of them have discovered that "not sucking" is worth more than a few hundred megahertz. The "halo effect" is real, and is not due entirely to people "buying in" to an Apple lifestyle.
The people who have strong technical or financial barriers to using Apple computers are far outnumbered by the proud Apple haters who haven't actually used a Mac long enough to appreciate the little things. However, unless somebody else starts releasing well designed computer hardware and software, Apple will eventually win over most of the haters through sheer ubiquity. (I expect that at some point, there will be a tipping point where hating Apple becomes uncool. If we pass that tipping point before Apple has serious competition, Apple will probably achieve a near-monopoly.)
> Fortunately for Apple, far more people have been willing to try the iPhone than have been willing to try their computers
Most people I know that have (and love) the iPhone today hated it before they tried it. I had a friend who kept saying his Windows Mobile phone was fine for all the stuff he needed, and there was no reason to get an iPhone. After he moved in with me in Vancouver (from New Brunswick) and saw how fluid it was for me to use my iPhone, and how I never had to dick around with it uselessly like he did with his just to get it to work, he switched.
Two years of me telling him it was great, and he didn't believe me. A week of seeing me use it changed his mind.
"If somebody is saying something good about a pointing device on a non-Apple laptop, odds are good that they've never spent time with Apple's touchpad. It's that much better"
Personally, I despise the acceleration curve Apple uses when I'm using a mouse with my MBP. I went through all kinds of contortions to deal with it or change it. I tossed out my mighty mouse after a couple months due to crud build-up and returned the magic mouse because it was virtually impossible to use without hand cramps or having it slide across my desk.
The only thing I really think is special about the trackpad on my MBP is its size, but I've found that the pad on my Dell just seems to work better with higher accuracy and less padding around and the ergonomics "feel" better to me.
I'd pay extra money for them to un-suck their pointy interface devices and software. They're really that bad.
Why I can't I hook up something like an iPad to my Mac as an interface device? Mirror the screen on it so I have some direct eye-finger synergy? I'd pay for something like that, with a nice capacitive touch screen.
I'm actually dividing the world between people who value good design in the things they use every day, and people who don't value good design. It's just a peculiarity of the market that Apple is the only computer company that is currently effectively targeting the former group. I realize that not all of the latter group actively criticize Apple and Apple users, but they are still likely to be surprised when they sit down and really use an Apple product.
