That's a strange comment to make, because the same mentality that appreciates the value Apple brings to the marketplace should also recognize that encyclopedias are far and away a better choice than Wikipedia. Wikipedia is Dell/HP/Taiwan, and encyclopedias are Apple.
Each has their place, but it isn't the same place.
Oh, come on
Do people seriously believe that?
Let me explain
my mentality to you. I use what works best. I have extremely ecclectic interests, so I find traditional encyclopedias far too limiting.
For instance:
The Encyclopædia Britannica said:
The 2007 Macropædia has 699 in-depth articles, ranging in length from 2 to 310 pages and having references and named contributors. In contrast, the 2007 Micropædia has roughly 65,000 articles, the vast majority (about 97%) of which contain fewer than 750 words, no references, and no named contributors.
In contrast:
Wikipedia said:
The English-language Wikipedia currently contains 2,053,538 articles.
This number excludes redirects, discussion pages, image description pages, user profile pages, templates, help pages, portals, articles without links to other articles, and pages for Wikipedia administration.
So assuming that each Wikipedia article contains no more useful information than the usual Micropædia article, Wikipedia still has 31.2 times as many articles. In my personal experience, the Wikipedia articles I've read have been longer, more comprehensive, more meticulously-sourced (generally), and far more conservative (by which I mean avoiding speculation) than the books I've read for a given subject.
Of course, that doesn't go into accuracy -- but I suggest that useless or incorrect information in many fields is easy to discern. Vandalism almost never is of an intellectually-dishonest sort, but is more often performed by bored teenagers and quickly reverted. While I wouldn't build a nuclear reactor from Wikipedia instructions, I would not build one from Encyclopedia instructions either. As I mentioned above, I believe Wikipedia to be of higher quality than most if not all of the books I've read for a given subject. I don't believe myself to be reading the wrong books, either... even if you considered me personally ignorant or unable to find books, certainly my wife, a librarian with seven years experience working in science libraries would be able to.
Likening Wikipedia to a specific brand of computer would be futile; you could, however, liken it to Project Gutenberg, whereas a customary encyclopedia could be likened to the
Great Books of the Western World (forgive me for linking to Wikipedia -- you have to register to read the article about it on Britannica's website); one has over 20,000 works and is completely free of cost. The other has sixty volumes and costs $1200.
Believing something is better just because it's expensive is utterly retarded.
