Seriously, if all you have is "Apple is a religion" then you have no business talking about Apple. Or business. Or even soup.

For a loyal Apple fan, product choice was never about quality or price, but about an emotional association and pride.

Uh, speaking as a "loyal Apple fan" and someone who also wasted a lot of time in business school, that is a load of what experts call "crap." It feels ridiculous that we even have to have this conversation in 2012, that we have to put the lie to the idea that more than 100 million people have bought iPhones so far this year because Apple is some kind of freaking , but here we are, thanks to the good perfesser.

Apple does not build products that satisfy a feature checklist. It does not pointlessly jam in technologies that have little practical application (see: NFC). While you might be able to buy products in the same category for less, you often can't buy name-brand products in the same category for less and you can buy name-brand products with the same high build quality and user experience. Further, Apple products generally provide a lower cost of ownership.

This is why people buy Apple products. Because they provide value at their price point. Not because Steve Jobs put the voodoo on us. If you're not going to address that argument--which we've made about a billion times--if you simply have no comeback for that, then just stop writing about Apple.