As your reply is incorrect in so many ways, factual, incorrect ways, not opinionated ways, it's hard to even begin to take you seriously.

YOU brought up the whole haters vs fanboys commentary. I don't HATE Apple, as you suggested. You are taking what you have seen other people say or do and applying it to how I feel about it, which is false from all angles.

Please describe the difference between a fan and a fanboy, besides one specifying gender.

They all copy from each other. Yes, when they ALL have similar products. When Apple offers less but claims others, with more, have copied them, they are sniffing too much glue, a little is good but not too much, glue is bad, m'kay?

You are completely wrong in your assertion that marketing hasn' tmade Apple consumers in to sheep. That is a very specific and one way street, other products gain popularity on their merits, Apple has no such claim as they simply don't do what others can.

As far as competition, it's not a matter of preference. Specifically again, the iPod. A music player has to do one thing, reproduce music. The quality of that reproduction is VERY measurable and VERY comparable to determine superiority in such devices. When a music player is measurably inferior at reproducing music, compared to others, it means it is a substandard device. Has nothing at all to do with preferences in any way.

Next thing you are going to try and convince me of, is that a $499 Samsung stereo system from Best Buy is just as good as a Cambridge Tube amp, because more people bought it. Consumers are NOT always right, in fact they are wrong more often than right. WHY? Marketing.

I know all the audio marketing scams and have heard people come into stores parroting what they want, while completely ignorant of the fact that the specs they are comparing are unregulated, completely made up and not actual measurements etc. Consumers are lead to believe that Wattage and frequency response reporting is equal among all brands and products, when in fact they are the most unregulated and ridiculous measurements of an audio product ever created. To compare specs in such a case is exactly why so many consumers spend big money on total garbage and keep such companies alive. According to 'consumer specs', BOSE speakers are better than Totem, Focal etc. which is an absolute joke. According to consumers, in the 80's and due to marketing prowess, BOSE managed to make their speakers appear to be superior.

Through spending tens of thousands on in store displays, refusing dealers to offer side by side testing and by clever marketing, there are STILL people who think BOSE makes a good product. In reality they are the biggest swindle in the market, even worse than the guys who sell no name speakers in parking lots out of white vans.

Marketing completely absorbs markets, creates trends and people FOLLOW because they want to believe what they are told.

If you actually feel that consumers drive markets in the 20th and 21st centuries, you know absolutely nothing at all about marketing. Markets drive consumers and will do so until consumers actually educate themselves instead of reading forums, reviews and blogs to form opinions based on opinions.

Again you go on comparing features and saying that one feature might not benefit another user. I am NOT talking about features, I am talking about benefits which benefit all users, not things one guy might use and the other not so much. Having two headphone jacks might not benefit all users, it's a feature with limited benefit.
Having ear bud headphones vs headband style might not benefit all consumers as some have different preferences.
If you suggest sound quality and freedom or power choice and file choice does not benefit ALL users, you have done too much acid though. Again I refer to the 3-legged race horse or car with half an engine. These aren't preferences for specific consumers, these are serious product flaws that restrict the ability of the product to perform.

You just don't get it and I don't think you ever will. Your arguments apply when defending against haters on a blog or fanboy forum, which is not the case here. I don't oppose Apple, I just oppose their marketing of inferior products as superior and how Apple fans jump in line like lemmings, without a clue.

They are buying PURELY out of their adoration for a brand or a trend, not the quality or performance of the product they are buying.

Again you rabble on about OS preferences, but that's not the discussion I am having with you. All the user features in the world don't matter when a product simply doesn't do it's main job better than any others. iPods are HORRIBLE sounding music players, they have poor DAC converters, no sound control and only play the lowest quality format of music. Their ability to reproduce sound is abysmal, yet their key job is to reproduce sound. Other players in the past had phenomenal audio quality, offer so much more flexibility for the listener and played music all day, if not you just had to throw another battery in to keep going. iPods don't even scratch the surface of the quality and performance of older players that were trended away with Apple's marketing and completely moronic consumers that don't know their arse from their elbow.

iPhones actually have one of the worst "PHONES" on the market. Terrible quality sound, useless speakerphone, terrible menu access to navigate call history etc. To anyone that is used to using a REAL phone, a business phone, even a Nokia mobile from the early 90's, iPhones are completely useless as 'phones' but offer good web access, a HALF DECENT camera (finally) and too many apps for their own good, most of which do the same thing. Sound quality, signal strength and battery life is a complete joke compared to others. But they are sold on user features, which are great for casual users but useless for business enterprise. However, many businesses still invest in them because other people do and in my line of work I can attest that most business owners have no business even being in business, they are easily fooled, don't look out for their company's best interests and will spend money on trend based solutions for their companies.

So STOP going on and on about personal preferences, which has NOTHING to do with quality or performance at all.

My comment right from the beginning is: Apple's mobile devices are substandard for their purpose. Apple successfully sells substandard products purely due to marketing.

If they actually said, we limit the sound quality, we limit file use, we limit battery and connectivity options but it's a cool experience. Would people still buy them? Perhaps a few but not most...until others jumped on board and then the lemmings line up

User experience means NOTHING compared to the base functions of a device being substandard to others.