: Neither Apple nor Harley can compete on the basis of *performance-to-price
: ratio* (mark the meaning of this phrase), so they have to resort to
: creating a Cult Following of it's disciples (and doing it well indeed)

Not to get off-top but I have to answer this one!

Apple's computers at least are competing very fairly with the other pc makers, and winner converts to their Cult. Have you ever priced a Mac PC with a close competitor?! I did last year. I priced a 17" MacBookPro laptop with the nearest thing Dell had: a 17" XPS. The Dell was $400 cheaper to start... but then I had to ADD over $800 in hardware upgrades to make it the same as the MacBook. And I mean SAME. Same hard-drive, RAM, processor, etc. Their stuff actually works. My old Windoze PC drives me nuts!! I can't comment on Apple's other products...

I DO agree with you on Harleys. I can't for the life of me understand the mystique that surrounds them when you look at the poor engineering they have.

Back on-topic... My grandfather had an old Grumman canoe. It was fun. I have some fond memories in it. The one thing good about it was that it was easy to fix. Any one with a pop-rivet gun could fix a hole in it. And we did... a lot. Would I buy one for myself? No way in bloody hell!! Would I build an aluminum kayak?! Why?!?! Artistic reasons... maybe.

Food for thought...

Dan