[stovt001]

My wife is a mac freak. My father-in-law makes regular sacrifices at the Holy Altar of Apple. Honestly, Jobs could take a dump in a little white case and he would pay hundreds of dollars to own it. Me, not so much. I had a really bad experience with my ipod - the battery died prematurely while it was still under the original warranty, the Apple guy at the misnamed "Genius Bar" said he couldn't find anything wrong with it, but if I bought an extended warranty he was sure he could find something, wink wink - and I wanted an ipod touch but everyone I tried at the Apple store crashed within seconds of me picking it up.

Anyway, you get this a lot in the business world - some B-school grads who got the diploma but really didn't learn anything try to justify their education by picking the "hot" company of the day and saying everyone should be just like them.

One last thing - you know how to erase 30% of Apple's market value? Post a rumor that Jobs died and watch the share price plummet. Steve is Apple, and without his charisma (that's all it is, really) Apple is just another company. People don't actually like the product. They like the image and marketing that Steve sells.