OK, Like Comfortcat said, stay on point. My point is, I am not an electrical engineer (Roee - sorry to use you as an example but you started it
Apple products just work without having to be a geek (some say I am). I took back a 1 1/2 year old MacBook Pro (6mos out of warranty) for a minor screen resolution issue and Apple ended up giving me a new one (the newest model). Try that with another brand.
POINT - I just want aviation products that I don't have to spend a great deal of time rebooting/configuring/antispamming/etc/etc/etc
Gary,
You can pick on me, I can take it. And yes, I did ask for it
I completely agree that there's value in a product that require less "fussing" to get it working and keep it working right. That used to be a major advantage of Apple over competing products. But while Apple still has some advantage there, that gap has very much narrowed between Apple and Windows, and believe it or not even Linux. But Apple still has some advantage there on the software side, no doubt.
The flip side of that coin though is that on Apple products, the hood is welded shut. When things are working as they should, that's great. But when inevitably they don't, you're entirely dependent on the graces of the mothership for a solution. In many cases, as you pointed out, the solution comes from a trip to the Apple store. Ok. In other cases, when you run into something you need that simply isn't supported, then, well, you're just SOL.
It's also interesting to me that one of the most common anecdotes I hear from Apple fans in favor of Apple, and yours is a perfect example, is something like the this:
"The [hard drive, or motherboard, or display, etc.] on my MacBook [crashed, or broke, or brunt out, or stopped working in some way]. Apple replaced it for me for free. When it happened again a year later, again they replaced it for free!"...
As far as reliability goes, at least on the hardware side, it doesn't seem that Apple actually does all that well. But to their credit, they do give great customer support when their products do break.
On the non-Apple side, there is a greater diversity of hardware available, and one can procure a system that is either more reliable or less reliable than a Mac. It does however, as you point out, take a little bit more homework or know-how to choose well. Where Apple leaves you no choices, in the non-Apple world the choices are yours to make.
And on the customer service side in the non-Apple world, there is also a diversity of options. It's just that you don't get Apple-style comprehensive service by default built in to the purchase price of the product. It's a choice you have to make, and pay for explicitly if you want it. Dell, for example, offers several different levels of service contracts, including at the higher tiers on-site support (they'll come to you and fix your problem). That kind of service contract isn't cheap of course, but if you feel you need that level of service, it's available at your option. What's important to note is that comparing say a Dell Windows machine to an Apple of similar performance, the Dell Windows machine will be far less expensive than the Apple even if you opt in to a top tier service contract.
ps. Roee, you are right, most Apple fans are more supportive and fanatical about their purchases. They probably got that way from owning pc products they had to constantly spend a lot of time fixing.
That hasn't been my experience. My PCs seem to have been more reliable than Macs. But I do make sure to use high quality hardware (not necessarily expensive, just well chosen).
pss. Apple iOS or any mobile system you want to develop for is probably the way to go.
Mobile vs non-mobile, depends on what the application is (Darwin, care to share?). And if mobile, iOS vs. another OS... Consider that iOS market share has flattened out at about 30%, while Android is now at over 50% and fast growing. But that's the market at large. We don't know the relative market share among RV pilots, which is presumably the target audience for the product Darwin is developing. But again, in any case, I would advocate platform independence to the extent possible.