[etempleton]

I don’t know if the cool kids are Apple fanboys, but affluent cool kids buy Apple. Go to any college campus and count what percentage of computers, phones, headphones, smart watches are Apple. The more affluent the college the more Apple. It is a luxury consumer brand in the way no other technology company is. They have no real competitor or equal.

[pedalpete]

Are you equating affluence with cool? Do only cool kids go to college? Apple has no competitor or equal?? I look around me, and I see lots of non-mac device, non-iPhones. So everyone around me must be incredibly uncool. But my parents, they must be the coolest, because they have iPads and iPhones, but then again, they use windows PCs, so not as cool as the affluent kids.

[etempleton]

No, I am not.

And no, cool kids do not always go to college.

And no I am not conflating the two.

I am saying that rich cool kids buy Apple. And 18-21 year olds are the tastemakers for all the kids younger then themselves and also, sometimes, for adults older then them too.

Please note: I am not saying that you have to think 18-21 are cool, I don’t, but they are by popular definition.

And no, they have no competitor across their product categories. They have competitors for specific products, but no one really goes head to head with them across even half of their products and for most of their products they are #1 by a huge margin:

Luxury Phones Headphones Tablets Music Service Computers Smart Watches

They are a leader or top competitor in all of those spaces. Who else can say that?