[sharedfrog]

> People are confusing their own individual preferences [...] with the larger motivations of the masses.

No, I don't think we are. We're lamenting the motivations of the masses.

Most people want something that 1) looks pretty, and 2) "just works". The advantages of something objectively better (let's assume there's a metric we can agree on) would have to be exponentially greater than the effort to make it work in order to make most people bother with the switch.

On top of that, it's a psychological defense mechanism to simply ignore bad things. Certainly if the effort to fix them is great.

And that gets us to "I don't care if I'm spied on."

[jb1991]

It's not that I want to spied or don't care, it's more that it just doesn't overwhelm the decision to use Apple products. I don't care enough about it for it to affect my choices. And the reason for this is: the alternatives. There are none that are genuinely better. There are trade-offs. Can I use my Adobe suite on Linux? Not really. I'm enamored by the relative purity of Linux but I know it would use up a lot more of time in my short life to do certain things compared to a commercial OS, and my time is my greatest commodity.

Is Windows overall a better choice than mac? No, it's just different. Every Apple product I've owned has outlived products from other companies by an average of 2x, so I'm also saving a bundle in costs over the long term. (I used an iPhone for seven years before I upgraded to the iPhone 10, and my old iPhone still works perfectly but just doesn't support the latest OS).

I think the problem is that motivations widely vary and there is nothing wrong with choosing something that "just works" the vast majority of the time.