It’s all about me and I have a choice

I am subscribed to Jason Calacanis's mailing list and I read his article on The Case Against Apple. Some interesting points and some I agree to as well. Then today I read some arguments/discussions against the post here and here on TechCrunch. I am not writing in favor of or against Jason's post. I am just penning my thoughts on what questions make it easier for me to select a product that I am going to use. So while I was digesting the thoughts of different people on this matter, I thought it came down to few basic things for me: –

• Are the products [Apple] better and value for money?
• Am I loving the user experience that Apple products are giving me compared to other alternatives?
• Are the products making me more efficient and productive in what I need to get done?
• Am I really excited about using the product and invest my time, energy and emotions in learning about it and dealing with it's short comings?

If the answers to the above questions is more number of Yes then No, then I am buying those products.

I used to say that I am a FAN of Microsoft product or I am a FAN of iPhone/Mac. But now I think that the important thing to me is if the product is going to work for me and if it can pass through my questions above, I will make a change, I will not get stuck with Apple or Microsoft for that matter. At the end of the day, it's about me and whether the devices are fulfilling my requirements and making me happy. I have a choice at any given time. If I am not happy about it, I will move on to another product. Recently, I read many people moved away from iPhone because essentially, the benefits of iPhone were lost compared to other benefits they could have. They had a choice and they executed on these choice.

I used to admire Microsoft and Microsoft products and used to be a un-paid evangelist for their products. But in the last year or so, Windows Vista has given me a lot more grief [it was a combination of applications that I run on Windows Vista and Windows Vista itself] but I got tired of the time I was spending on fixing issues and getting my PC to work perfectly. That's when I started looking for alternatives including running Ubuntu or going back to Windows XP. Then I started using Windows 7 on my computers and I was happy chappy again but it was a bit too late.

I am a recent Mac convert and quite happy about it and 80% of time i use my Mac compared to Windows 7 systems. But if at any given point, the benefits of using Macbook drop to using other system, I will make the move.