Out of curiosity, have you found a self-hosted application similar to Evernote? For Dropbox, there's Owncloud, but I haven't found anything like Evernote.

I've got a Mac and an iPhone. I'll agree with you on the iPhone side. My iPhone is "locked down" in the sense that without rooting it, I can only install curated applications... although so far, I haven't found something I want to do that I can't.

But I disagree with you on the Mac. I've been using PCs since the early 90s. I use Linux (and occasionally Windows) at work. I bought my first Mac this year. In no way is it locked down any more or less than any of my Windows, Linux, or FreeBSD boxes. In fact, because I can very easily compile and install just about any *nix application on it, I feel like it's more open than my Windows box ever was.

It truly is great to have a fantastic GUI OS, while at the same time being able to drop to a terminal and use the standard suite of UNIX tools when I want.

I've had iOS 6 on my 4S for a few days now... the speed doesn't seem to have changed. However, I was weary of that: iOS 4 and 5 made my old 3GS a LOT slower, and iOS 5 made my girlfriend's iPhone 4 slower.

Some companies still do sell "Mac memory" but it's just overpriced DDR3 ;)

There's also Micro Center if you're not near a Fry's.

They give you a backup code you can use in case you lose your phone.

Officially, they have a 1-year warranty. You can purchase an extended warranty (called "AppleCare") that takes it to 3 years. After that, it's a bit of a grey area. Officially, they won't give you free service after that. Anecdotally, I've heard many stories of people getting free out-of-warranty service, including screen and motherboard replacements. In fact, there's even a comment in this post where someone took in a 2007 macbook for some kind of warranty work, and they replaced it with a 2009 model on the spot.

I think it comes down to personal preference - mine is that I don't really want to repair my main PC anymore. I don't want to screw with it. If it breaks, I want to have someone else fix it so I can get on with things. And I don't want to have to fight with tech support, wait for them to ship me a box so I can send the computer to a repair factory in some other state, wait a week to get it back. I want to drive 8 minutes to the Apple store with my computer in hand and have them fix it right there, which is usually the norm.

And for me, at year 4-6, if I still have this Mac and it has a hardware failure... I'll probably take it in to see if Apple will fix it. If it'll cost me a lot, I'll probably just get a new computer. I haven't kept a computer for more than 3-4 years in a long time.

I'm fairly sure that every mac except the air and pro with retina display have user-upgradeable RAM. It's just standard DDR3.

I don't know if I buy into the planned obsolescence thing. Anecdotally, I know lots of people who have pretty old Macs that still use them. I'm actually surprised at how long the batteries in some of them have lasted. My girlfriend's mom just got a 3-year-old white MacBook and the battery still lasts 2-3 hours. My Aunt had a black MacBook (must be circa 2006) that was in great shape, she just replaced it a month ago.

Obviously the more you buy, the better, but I think Apple's M.O. has been to try to entice you to buy the new shiny thing because it's new and shiny, not because your old not-so-shiny doesn't work anymore.

Repairable by me, true (according to the user manual in my Mac Mini, all I'm supposed to touch is the RAM).

I like that if my computer fails, I can walk into the Apple store and make the "geniuses" fix it.

In the end, though, it's a personal preference. That just happens to be mine.

This.

I am probably what you'd call a "tech person" - I'm a programmer, and I consider myself to be pretty knowledgeable.

I bought a Mac Mini in February for this exact reason. I do not want to have to screw around with my main PC. I don't care about upgrading it, and I don't want to have to be an IT guy for myself. With the AppleCare warranty, if anything happens to this computer hardware-wise within the next 3 years, I can take it to the Apple store (which, luckily, is about an 8 minute drive), and they'll fix it.

If anything happens software-wise, worst-case scenario, I reboot, hit command+r, and it'll reinstall the OS from the recovery partition, or, failing that, thesc internet, I can restore my latest time machine backup, and I'm up and running.

Now, that's not to say that Windows is unreliable, I've found Windows 7 to be just fine. Best Windows yet. But I've found OSX to be really solid.

Also. Unlike other Apple users, I actually don't have any issues with people using PCs, Windows, Android phones, etc. I bought a Mac because I wanted one, and I won't look down on you for buying a PC. In fact, I really couldn't care less.

I love computers, but I screw with them all day. I don't want to have to deal with them at home. It is for this reason that I'd hate to be a gynecologist.

I don't think that's a fair generalization.

This is actually a thing:

From this:

Personally, I use a Mac and I own an iPhone. I use an HP laptop with Linux for work, and my server at home is FreeBSD. I couldn't care less what type of computers or phones other people use. Maybe I'm the minority?

But seriously, folks. We've got bigger problems than to worry about what kinds of electronics other people buy for themselves.

So, you're exactly right, hairyfeet. It is a personal preference!

I never thought I'd read something that would make me feel so bad about my keyboard chioces. :(

And that's the problem - by default, it's a 4-digit pin. You can enable a more complex passcode that can be longer and include other characters, but that option is turned off by default.