There are fanboys and then there are Apple Fanboys.
Personally I am anything but an Apple fanboy. I have a Unibody Macbook, which I bought one year after it came out. I waited six months after iPhone 3G came out, and almost 2 years after the first iphone release to get my iphone. But I like my Apple products the same way I am content with my Windows7 PC and Ubuntu-only laptop.
Fanboys, by definition, are irrational supporter of whatever they support. They will stay on line for days to buy the latest release of phone or laptop or movie or gaming system. This is not unique to Apple, Microsoft has its share of fanboys with Xbox and Google has its share of fanboys with Search, gmail and Chrome and Star Wars franchise has its share of fanboys with each extended, super-HD, behind-the-scene, collector-edition release.
But what makes Apple fanboys unique and why is it so easy to be an Apply fanboy?
In my opinion, Apple has consistently pushed the envelope in whatever new product they have released and even with their existing products, with new releases, they have set a higher bar for themselves. Year after year they have been doing this consistently. So even when they have occasional mediocre products release and updates, it gets massive support from Apple Fanboys by the sheer strength of past reputation.
Every single new product that I can think of since 2001 (minus AppleTV) have been blockbuster success for them and almost all of those new products have created new markets for those products. How many companies can honestly say they have created three new block-blaster market in a decade? I honestly cant think of any, if you can please let me know.
When ipod was first released, it wasnt the first mp3 player but the market was very small. iPod single handedly created a standard for how a portable mp3 player should look like. Almost every mp3 player that followed after that tried to copy the way ipod looked and functioned. And with each iteration, Apple evolved ipod in to many form factors and bigger screens and now in to a touch-screen; everyone else tried to copy Apples implementation instead of trying to innovate (successfully) on their own.
They have done the same with iPhone. Before Apple introduction of iPhone keyboard phone was the standard and now for most (some still prefer keyboards) touch-screen is suddenly the standard of how phone should be. Not only the form factor of the touch-phone but Apples implementation of the UI and marketplace has been closely followed and copied by other companies.
And now with iPad, Apple is rolling the slate device market on its head. Its not to say that there werent any slate device before iPad, its just that there werent any slate device market of this size before Apples introduction of ipad. And now, as it happened before, the rest are trying to catchup to Apples implementation of iPad.
Of course add to that, their strategy of über-secrecy (or controlled leaks) and excellent hyper-bolic marketing team and you have a successful product release in (almost) every single product release.
From an Apple fanboys perspective (I can only presume) you take pride in belonging to an exclusive club of consumers who are the first in getting the product that will create markets in coming years and everyone will follow.
Very few companies (if any) can say they have a large, loyal, consumer waiting to buy whatever you will throw at them
