I wish I said it this eloquently, but Fast Company said it instead. So as you can quite clearly see, attraction and conversion are not enough.

Gorgeous as Apple’s products are, people aren’t buying them for their inherent technological superiority. For half the price of a Mac, you can pick up a PC that does pretty much the same thing. There are MP3 players that produce superior audio to the iPod. The iPhone has Wi-Fi and a beautiful touch screen, but the phone itself is middling, as is its cellular network. Even the security of Apple’s operating system, a theme the company returns to frequently, is overstated: As most hackers will tell you, it’s security-by-obscurity, a function of tiny market share, not inherent uncrackability. The CIO at one major Silicon Valley company told us that Apple’s vulnerability on this front made it unlikely that he would ever switch. (See “iPhone Insecurity” for one security expert’s sobering experience with the iPhone.)

No, it’s the interface–the user’s interaction with the devices–and the exquisite wrapping that have separated Apple products from the great unwashed. And give Jobs his due: He brought the personal computer to market, after all. He has an unerring eye for design and functionality. There’s an intuitive humanity to his machines, and that has helped Apple forge an enviable bond with its legions of fans.

But when you get down to it, the Apple phenomenon is as much about fashion as it is about technology. You might say that Steve Jobs is the Marc Jacobs of computers (minus the heroin), betting the house his products will be, season after season, cooler than anyone else’s. Yet fashion is, by definition, fickle. Lose the buzz, and you’ve got trouble. And for the first time in years, there are signs that Apple is not infallible and that Jobs’s reservoir of goodwill with his followers is not bottomless.