Why I'm laying down this background information is that it's important to understand that Apple being a dominant force on the PC Market after the 1980's is a more recent thing than some people think. Oh sure, there are some Apple die-hards who think that the post-old-world Macintosh - ie the "Power Macintosh" was a smash hit product. Truth was, Apple almost went under during the 1990's and early 2000's. JObs was next to leave Apple to form NexStep in 1987, and then Apple faltered a bit with their restrictive rules on software, and limiting access of major business applications on their hardware. For awhile, they were in direct competition with Microsoft/IBM.

Historically, Apple has changed Architecture several times, there's the "Old World Macs" (ie Motorola 6800x based machines) which were typically black and white AIO devices with high resolution CRTs built in running system software 1-6.x.x. The "Old World" Macs can be equated to a IBM PC XT or IBM PC AT (8088-80286) machines, while the late era devices (68030 and 68040) were equal to the 386/486 machines of the later DOS PC era. Then came the "Power Macintosh" era which started with the Power Macintosh 6000/7000/8000/9000 series machines (I've owned four myself) which were the equivalent to the PEntium 1/2/3/4 machines - ending with the G3 era in the early 2000s. The G3 era saw a swap of codebase for Mac OS from Apple's proprietary software code, to a Unix-based design based on Debian (IIRC) Linux somewhat - and got renamed Mac OSX. In the mid 2000's - around 2005, Apple changed from IBM PowerPC Silicon (funny huh) to regular Intel Silicon - ie Core 2 Duo/Quad and Core I-series stuff - which leads us to these "Orphaned" and (somewhat) "Modern" Macintosh machines that are now hitting the third hand market in droves. When Apple went to Intel silicon, they became very popular for awhile, almost as popular as the PC.

What apple does right I see, is they provide the operating system (MacOS) free of charge to anyone with their hardware - up to the last supported version. Another thing they do right is they DO make some really good hardware. Some of their lower end products have performance comparable to a mid-tier Enterprise product from a reputable PC manufacturer. Like to compare Dell, a Dell Inspiron PALES Compared to a Macbook stnadard model that competes with it, but a Macbook STandard can be EASILY Compared to a comparable Dell Latitude Enterprise-class product.

What they do that's not so favorable, is who "closed" their hardware still is, evne the intel hardware. Some issues I've run into include certain devices not working as expected (such as sound via internal speakers on my Late 2015 iMac 21.5" running Linux Mint), or upgradablity (Same computer requires about $25-50 of special "Apple" Parts to do a hard drive upgrade from a 5400rpm spinning drive to a 512GB SSD). Typically, the newer Mac, the more difficulties you might have, as Apple is trying very hard to retain their profitability by making sure that their hardware does not hit the 3rd hand market. They want you to "buy in" to that first paragraph I mentioned, and continue to make up the difference by trading your previous Mac product to be recycled up to another one. But not everyone wants to stay with Apple, so devices fall through the cracks - that's where guys like me come in!