You seem to have used my post as a reason to talk about yourself. This I don't really understand. Regardless...
1. Part of the marketing around Apple products assumes exclusivity, that's why so much effort is made into making their devices look a certain way and why their stuff is more expensive than anything equivalent.
The 'Apple is more expensive' line has been debunked over and over. The reality is that Apple isn't trying to gain market share at any cost, and since there are no competitors producing macs (well, not legitimately anyway) they can keep their prices reasonable, make a profit, and put that back into R&D, whereas companies like Dell have to slash their margins in order to sell more units and compete on price.
2. As I've said several times before on Slashdot, I'm 47 years old and have been a techie in the telecoms and computer industry over here in the UK since I was 20. I've used (and still do) Linux, UNIX (Solaris & SCO) and Windows for years yet never once found any reason to buy any Apple product.
Well good for you. I've never found any reason to buy any Ford, BMW, Sun, or Prada product. That doesn't mean there isn't a market for them, or that people who buy their products don't enjoy using them. I have, however, purchased several Apple products, but only after products from Dell, HP, and so on proved themselves to be unreliable and Windows proved cumbersome and insecure.
3. I'm pretty interested in computers and notice what people are using around me, whether I'm at an airport, in the office or at a customer site. I see myriads of people using Windows, quite a large number of Linux (mainly Red Hat) servers and a few (SuSE and Ubuntu) desktops or occasional laptop. I've seen a total of five Apple machines - a notebook owned by an American instructor on a router course I did, a couple of students posing in Starbucks with a Macbook, and the one owned by a friend of mine that was given to him by his boss (who didn't know what to do with it) that now sits in a dusty box in the corner because he doesn't know what to do with it either.
Again, good for you. I'm very interested in computers, and going to conferences, meetups, and events, I find that Apple products are in good supply. Three years ago, half of the laptops at a given conference were Macs. A few weeks ago I went to another conference, and this one was nearly 100% Apple. And none of these conferences were the least bit Apple-related, incidentally. The only conference I went to at which that this wasn't the case was a Microsoft conference, but at that one, almost no one had a laptop out.
4. I work in converged telecoms and VoIP solutions and the reality is that Linux has basically trashed the commercial UNIX market when it comes to being the core OS of workhorse servers that drive tens of thousands of extensions, trunks, voicemail boxes, etc. Additionally, Windows gets used for the administration servers so that there's better integration into corporate intranets. No mention of Apple whatsoever, not even any administration clients.
Ok, so Linux is used on servers, which isn't news, and people write apps for Windows. None of this is a big surprise. It's a question of market penetration, and Windows nets you a bigger piece of the pie. That doesn't mean that Apple isn't making significant strides and rapidly gaining in mindshare.
What gets me is that you seem to have packaged this rant up for delivery whenever the least opportunity presents itself. Not a single measure of what you said has anything to do with what I said. You simply used a position that you disagree with, apparently passionately and vehemently, to spring off into your own personal diatribe. That's kind of sad.