It's several things that change with the era (and the changes cause friction and weeping and wailing).
In the late Eighties and early- to mid-Nineties, when Macs were not really particularly physically attractive machines, Mac fans were all about internal technical superiority. All the many physical differences that existed between Macs and Wintels at the time were taken as positives for the Mac. The 68000 or PPC was more elegant than x86. ADB and AppleTalk were better than serial, SCSI was better than your cheap-ass IDE drives, and so forth. Of course all these physical incompatibilities made it harder to get parts and peripherals, and they've all gradually eroded away over time, every time provoking grouching from the fanboys who are upset that Macs are taking another step backward and making them feel less special (you can even see that in the typically smart John Siracusa's eulogy for the G4/G5). But switching to commodity parts usually actually makes the machines easier to deal with.
Apple knows that people who like this feeling of technical superiority are part of their market, and they've tried to stretch it out in their marketing copy. But they also don't feel any particular obligation toward them, as they shouldn't.
In the Jobs era, the physical distinctions have mostly switched from internal parts to vastly prettier cases, and the later generations of Mac fans love that. Macs now look far more different from most Wintel PCs, even though they're far more similar on the inside than they were ten or fifteen years ago. The anti-fans sneer at this, like to talk about how Mac people are all style over substance; I think there's an undercurrent of sexual-stereotype politics there too (Macs as gay or feminine computers, Wintel PCs straight and masculine). Personally I like the shiny stuff, but the Mac fandom existed before Macs were all that shiny.
I think a lot of what attracts some people to the fandom is just the existence of the fandom. Personal computers were themselves a fandom in the early days that I remember from my adolescence. Now personal computers have so taken over the world that that can't be true any more; to generate the fandoms the world has to split up into smaller pieces. To get that fandom-feeling, people who like to be fans have to specialize on something. But it can repel too.
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In the late Eighties and early- to mid-Nineties, when Macs were not really particularly physically attractive machines, Mac fans were all about internal technical superiority. All the many physical differences that existed between Macs and Wintels at the time were taken as positives for the Mac. The 68000 or PPC was more elegant than x86. ADB and AppleTalk were better than serial, SCSI was better than your cheap-ass IDE drives, and so forth. Of course all these physical incompatibilities made it harder to get parts and peripherals, and they've all gradually eroded away over time, every time provoking grouching from the fanboys who are upset that Macs are taking another step backward and making them feel less special (you can even see that in the typically smart John Siracusa's eulogy for the G4/G5). But switching to commodity parts usually actually makes the machines easier to deal with.
Apple knows that people who like this feeling of technical superiority are part of their market, and they've tried to stretch it out in their marketing copy. But they also don't feel any particular obligation toward them, as they shouldn't.
In the Jobs era, the physical distinctions have mostly switched from internal parts to vastly prettier cases, and the later generations of Mac fans love that. Macs now look far more different from most Wintel PCs, even though they're far more similar on the inside than they were ten or fifteen years ago. The anti-fans sneer at this, like to talk about how Mac people are all style over substance; I think there's an undercurrent of sexual-stereotype politics there too (Macs as gay or feminine computers, Wintel PCs straight and masculine). Personally I like the shiny stuff, but the Mac fandom existed before Macs were all that shiny.
I think a lot of what attracts some people to the fandom is just the existence of the fandom. Personal computers were themselves a fandom in the early days that I remember from my adolescence. Now personal computers have so taken over the world that that can't be true any more; to generate the fandoms the world has to split up into smaller pieces. To get that fandom-feeling, people who like to be fans have to specialize on something. But it can repel too.