Loyalty can, and will, be eroded over time if the price/product/performance degrades significantly against competition. This is the near-current situation with the Apple computer range.
Because of the superior total cost of ownership of Macs vs PCs, I used to give my staff the choice of Apple running OSX or bootcamp/Windows or a Windows machine. As of right now they no longer have a choice - they're all given a Windows machine and even I may, as a longtime loyal Apple user, switch to Windows - the MS Surface range is just too good to ignore.
Right now, Apple seem to be moving into a very dangerous territory - relying on a loyal customer base whilst failing to produce machines with enough of a differentiator/cool factor whatever you want to call it to attract new customers away from competitor machines some of which, it has to be said, actually are cooler than Apple's current product range.
What I fervently hope is that the lack of updates to the desktop range and the stupidly high price increases of the now not-quite state-of the-art laptops is a deliberate strategy taken by Apple before their surprise release, no later than Q2 2017, of an entirely new ARM based Mac range, with detachable touchscreen laptops and desktop transformer models and that move to ARM will enable them to shout from the rafters about substantial price decreases and performance improvements.
fanboy medal.
