Heh....
Actually, I'm not sure if iGrip is partially serious here, or just going for some irony?
All I can say is, as a LONG time PC Windows (and before that, MS-DOS) user who made a pretty much wholesale personal switch to the Mac around 2000-2001, there's more than one grain of truth to this.
When I first got into computers as a hobby, it was the middle of the 1980's and dozens of companies were competing for your money, hoping to have the "best" personal computer on the market. Apple was just another player in that whole scene really, right along with Commodore, Atari, Radio Shack, Texas Instruments, and others. Nothing ran anyone else's software, so customers had to "choose a side" and stick with it, hoping it remained successful.
All of the PC clones put an end to that era, but only Apple soldiered on, stubbornly offering an alternative to anyone they could convince to use it.
By the mid to late 90's, it really looked pretty foolish to choose Apple. You were purposely spending more money for less functionality and much less useful software. They were mainly selling to people who never used anything else and were afraid of change.
But Jobs came in and cleaned house, offering a whole new product lineup running OS X and changing the landscape. All of a sudden, Apple really had something worth looking at again. So yeah, to me, the "new Apple" was NOT "just a computer" at all. It was a rebirth of an ideal the company had from the beginning but slowly failed to deliver on as the years passed.
Today? Apple has gotten so much positive press for what they've accomplished, it's become almost cliche. It's kind of a faux status symbol now, and too many people own their products to call it "exclusive" anymore. But it DOES show a kind of "good taste", in my opinion. It shows an appreciation for an operating system that bucked the trend and for computers where style still matters. (Everyone else trying to design a computer with good looks borrows heavily from Apple's latest choices!)
Is it a "way of life"? Probably no more than the Linux or other "open source" fans could call their computing choices a way of life. But as much as computers are part of our daily lives, it's an important choice.
It cracks me up when people claim that an Apple product is "just a computer". It is not.
It is a way of life; an identity. It is a way to show the world just exactly who you are and what you are all about. A rebel - a member of a small, exclusive club that KNOWS what is best and good and right.
It proves that you have good taste. It proves that you have more money than most people. It shows the world that you are made of The Right Stuff.
Anybody can buy a Microsoft product, but it takes a special, superior type of person to buy an Apple product. Albert Einstein used Apple computers. Mahatma Ghandi. John Lennon and Martin Luther King.
They all were people who Think Different.