Sandisk captures the mindset of many people well in their iDon't campaign well. People hate Apple so much they'll choose inferior products, pathetic plagiarisms of Apple's superior designs, just to feel cool. After all, by using Windows and products made exclusively for Windows, they can say, "I'm free! I'm not forced to use a certain software (except Windows) or hardware (except Intel or AMD)! I have complete control (except for the DRMs)." If their criticisms of Apple weren't so stupid, it wouldn't be so pathetic. If they refused to use Apple because Steve Jobs was a Nazi who planned to destroy all the Jews, then I would applaud them for their consumer ethics! Hell, I would even buy a Sansa (which is made by revolutionaries according to iDon't) instead of a nano (which is made by a faceless corporation only looking to make a buck). But their grievances against Apple aren't irrational. They simply don't like Apple because it's "square" to like Apple these days.

To show I'm no blind Mac bigot though, I'll concede a few truths. Apple isn't perfect. It is no better ethically than any other corporation. My MacBook Pro has heat issues. Bill Gates, who is quite charitable, is a better man than Steve Jobs, who is said to be a jerk. Windows XP is a great OS.* Apple's interests lie in Apple and not in me. After all, they are a businesses, and businesses exist for one thing: profit.

These days though, people think that Apple should forget about profit and focus on marketshare. They have become so obsessed with Microsoft's insane marketshare that they think that businesses exist only for it. "That is why Apple should release OS X for all PCs and not just for Macs," they say with their eyes closed. "Sure, Apple will lose a chunk of profit since copies of OS X have much thinner margins than Macs and Macbooks, but profit is irrelevant to a business! I learned this in Harvard!" Sure, marketshare is always good, but despite what they learned from Harvard, businesses are more interested in profit than in marketshare. If they weren't, then why would any business, such as not changed. Profit is still more important to them than marketshare. Otherwise, why would any business, such as Rolls-Royce, bother making luxury vehicles when they could gain a bigger marketshare with crappy commodity cars that have no profit margin whatsoever?

That's brings me to a complaint I often hear against Apple: Macs are too expensive. "Why pay $1,000 for a Mac when I could buy an eMachine for $500?" And yet, I could find a Pentium 2 on Craigslist for $100! Of course, the Pentium 2 with a whopping 64 MB of RAM (and a regular CD-ROM!) won't compare to the latest eMachine in Best Buy, but the eMachine doesn't compare to the iMac either. Compare the iMac to a PC that's actually built with the same features, and the price gap diminishes. Sometimes, the Mac's even cheaper! Sure, Apple is still more expensive than commodity hardware, and so people who don't want to spend more than $500 on a computer should go for the commodity PC, but most of the people who complain of the price of Macs are the ones who turn their nose up to such PCs, so for them to use price as an excuse for not buying a Mac is simply bull.

After complaints about price come complaints about "vendor lock-in." Essentially, these people do not like to feel dependent on one company. At least when that company's Apple. Now, I'll concede that the criticism is valid to those that only use multi-platform software, but many of these complainers use Windows, and some of the software and hardware today is made exclusively for Windows. How is being locked in to using one vendor (i.e. Microsoft) to run essential applications, services, and hardware because they're only compatible with Windows not vendor lock-in? "Because, every Windows user in the world uses Windows because they prefer it. Nobody feels as though they're forced to use it. And I can run Office 2007 on Solaris!" Right.

People use the same argument against iPod. They say, "I do not like the fact that I am forced to use iTunes, which is available on both Windows and OS X. I'd rather be forced to use Windows Media Player 10, which is only available on Windows! That's choice! I don't like how restrictive the monolithic iTunes Music Store is. I prefer choice, even if that choice merely consists of several crappy online stores that sell the same songs at the same price with the same DRM restrictions that are even more restricting than the iTMS DRM! I also prefer to spend hundreds of dollars renting my music for months so that I'll end up with nothing after I end my subscription. iTunes doesn't offer me that!" Do I even need to explain why their argument is stupid? I wonder why these people don't use Linux. Linux distros used to bundle hundreds of crappy audio players because, as I'm sure a Linux advocate would say, "It's better to have hundreds of crappy audio players than have one that actually works." Choice is always nice, but quality is even better, and the iPod+iTunes combination offers far better quality in its integration than the Sansa Crapper 9000 and a soon-to-be-bankrupt music store that only works on Windows does. "But what about stores like eMusic, huh?" Well, they work with iPods too. ?

And what is the recent obsession with built-in FM tuners? As a Sansa Crapper 9000 user would say, "This uglier, bulkier, more frustrating ripoff of an iPod nano is truly the consumer's choice. After all, iPods don't even have built-in FM tuners, and we know that everybody wants them! EVERYBODY!" If they did, then they'd buy a SC9000. Or they could just buy an FM tuner for the iPod. However, most iPod users I know haven't purchased one. Despite what some say, FM tuners aren't in such high demand these days. "But Apple should just include one anyway!" That's all right. Perhaps I'm old-fashioned, but I prefer my products not to be bloated with crap I'll never use.

Sure, Macs aren't for everybody. Macs won't satisfy gamers, users who love to fiddle with their machines and build their own computers, and people who are at bliss with Windows. And I know the last group exists, because Windows XP is a wonderful OS. Far better than Linux, who would be the forty-year-old virgin who craps on himself and thinks that groping women is gentlemanly if he were on the "Get a Mac" commercials. Seriously, a porn addiction is more productive and less shameful than "using" Linux (and I say this having been guilty of both). Anyway, I digress. There's definitely a market in which PCs and generic MP3 players are better. However, for those who don't like to toy around with computers and prefer things to just work well together, Apple is truly king and queen.

* As opposed to Vista AKA Translucency and Shadows Gone Wild, which is a pathetic imitation of OS X that tries too hard and demands too much, while Tiger could be run in almost all its glory (i.e. no annoying ripple effect on Dashboard) on a G3!