I might prefer my tea with sugar, given the choice, but I'll still be satisfied if the tea is very good (this metaphor assumes I don't demand sugar, but merely prefer sugar). I might prefer that Apple products work differently, but if they work well, I'll tolerate that they don't work exactly how I want. In either case, I'm willing to adapt my preferences a bit to an expertly made product.
> I thought that was supposed to be Apple’s thing. “We decide how to make it and you decide to buy it or not.”
This was Apple; your customization options were limited, but things were well designed and cohesive. If you were willing to adapt to their design paradigms, you'd benefit from their expertise, and also have to put in less effort tweaking. Plus you could pick up any random new Apple product and be up to speed immediately.
But to extend the metaphor, if the tea sucks, I'll stop going to that restaurant. If Apple makes their UIs both immutable and bad, I'll use something else.
This is an opinion, though. macOS did do certain things better than Windows, but it also did a lot of things markedly worse. The Mac market share never overtook the Windows market, on-merit it was considered a worse product. You or I might think it was a decent system at some point, but the evidence is really just anecdotal.
I agree with the parent comment, Apple's "thing" was their financial skill and not their manufacturing or internal processes. Once the IIc left the mainstream, people stopped appreciating the craftsmanship that went into making the Apple computer. It was (smartly) coopted by flashy marketing and droves of meaningless press releases, documented as the "reality distortion field" even as far back as the 1980s.
> I thought that was supposed to be Apple’s thing. “We decide how to make it and you decide to buy it or not.”
This was Apple; your customization options were limited, but things were well designed and cohesive. If you were willing to adapt to their design paradigms, you'd benefit from their expertise, and also have to put in less effort tweaking. Plus you could pick up any random new Apple product and be up to speed immediately.
But to extend the metaphor, if the tea sucks, I'll stop going to that restaurant. If Apple makes their UIs both immutable and bad, I'll use something else.