You are absolutely correct.
In fact, it is this (the elitism), that makes me hate Apple and their products more than any lack of feature in iOS ever could.
In fact, it is this (the elitism), that makes me hate Apple and their products more than any lack of feature in iOS ever could.
Can you imagine a world where there are hundreds of varieties of wine, but only several that are any good? Where you can pick between dozens of $2 bottles and several at $50 or more?
Apple's perceived elitism comes from people that produce something they truly care about, that are opinionated and uncompromising. That this is shockingly rare in the technology industry is fundamentally worrying.
While we see all of these other attempts as largely evil, we consider Apple to be producing _pieces of art_ that are allows them to compromise on universal acceptability. We, however, don't give that leeway to virtually anything else.
It encourages a narrative of a hero and a villain, a protagonist and antagonist, right and wrong, good and bad.
Bzzt, thank you for playing.
What sticks in my craw is that they're not even "elite", they just do things differently, and not always better than the competition/Android, even for things like UI.
And if Apple are found to have done or said something stupid (Nexus 7 vs. the iPad mini springs to mind here, along with the early 'supercomputer' G4s being hamstrung by their PC133 memory bus), then history is revised, instead of people learning from their mistakes.
Apple learned from their mistake. They made a dramatic transition to Intel inside of a single year. The impact to consumers was nearly zero.
Compare this with Microsoft's recent efforts to switch to ARM.
Of course, you'd never know that from the ads or commentary at the time (www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwI7xcdYV2k).