I call these people mac-iot savants (a la idiot savants). They usually have some skills that make them of some worth to society at large but the whole Mac thing borders on a mental delusional defect. Mac-iot savants range from mildly delusional to frothing at the mouth crazy. Responses to encounters with the type may therefore range from a patronizing "that's nice" to running in fear. Normally mac-iot savants are fairly harmless; the only danger being to large IT shops TCO when they have to support multiple disparate systems. Since mac-iot savants are mostly harmless I am fairly kind-hearted towards them and have even been known to toss them change when they congregate at the corner coffee shop.

I've been a devout Mac-head for more than 20 years. Yet I am quite conservative in my thinking, especially politics. In design environments, liberal thinking dominates, which means a conservative needs to keep quiet to keep a job (yes, you will be ostracized if you speak against liberal ideals). In print production though, the shift is the other way. Might explain why design types don't mesh with pressmen much.

I see your point and in retrospect I can identify a couple of the guys I know that fit the profile described. But I really would not generalize. I have 20 years of PC experience in my life, own 5-6 PCs running at home and last year I finally broke down and bought my son an iMac. He loves it and I love it. Ah… forgot to mention the entire family of four operates on iPhones… which really opened the way to the whole Mac thing. I’ve had numerous conversations over the past 2-3 years about devices like the iPhone with visual vMail, drag, pinch, high resolution display, smart, innovative UI, easy to use… and majority of people thought I was crazy… that if anyone would be crazy to build such thing, it would be too expensive and no one would buy it… things like that. Lo and behold – someone was crazy to design and build this and millions have bought it… the device thrives and is now the standard to beat.

My next PC purchase will be an iMac. From the type perspective I don’t fit the profile of a Mac owner as I’m as conservative as you can get. But I do love great design. My 8 year old setup his iPhone vMail by himself in a couple of minutes w/o any User Manual or outside help. Shocked me!... I must have owned 15 phones prior to my iPhone – and every single one of them required me to consult the User Manual to setup vMail. That’s the benefit and payoff of good design – makes sophisticated devices ridiculously easy for consumers to use. That’s what draws me to the Apple stuff. And the interesting thing is I see a ton of PC guys considering and buying Macs… I think people are fed up with crappy design.

While today there still exists this “I’m a Mac guy” attitude… it will fade away very quickly if Apple keeps up the innovation and design. We conservatives too can appreciate a good thing when we see it and touch it…

I am a 26 veteran of PCs, have supported thousands of IBM pc's in the early 80's, starting and overseeing clone building operations for three companies in the late 80's, and building and managing large networks since 1990. In my career, I had only ever touched 5 Apples/MAC's which I found extremely intimidating. Then I purchased a Vista box from an un-named Texas based PC builder, even though I insisted on an XP PRO build. Two weeks on the phone with a non-english speaking support center sent me running to the RMA (for full refund) department.
A hippie-fied co-worker said (laughing at my rants about the flawed O/S), get a MAC. After scoffing, I went to MAC.com, filled out the app, for the ZERO interest credit, and ordered my first MAC.

Silly thing just works, has all the features, power and performance of my fasted PC, could run WINDOWS apps, if I needed it to. Was recently upgraded to Leopard without errors, migrating all my apps and data for me to a Firewall connected external drive. Has NO VIRUS protection, (some might critize this), has self-cleaning email client, builds web pages on the fly, and talks to my bluetooth enabled phone, camera, camcorder, three printers, home LAN, business LAN, and uses every resource I have with little effort. To be completely honest, the ONLY challenge I had was getting it to talk to an HP4+ printer, the solution of which was to add a PostScript card to the printer, for $28.
Best investment I made in the last 10 years. I will never buy another PC, if Apple continues to build their systems this well. Well, I have to go and search for patches and drivers to connect my 5 y/o's Fisher Price camera to his XP box. Don't know why he doesn't use the MAC, guess he can't get his Mother to get of the MAC...
Thanks APPLE, you bring sanity to my life. When I get home, I can enjoy computing without spending the next two hours, trying to find a cure for the errors I get when trying to load that app on the XP box...