On the other hand...reading all of the above, I get the notion that people (the general public) with 1000 dollars or more to spend on a computer automatically buy an Apple.

A somewhat strangely association I admit, but it is one nonetheless. That same public would also spend twice the money to buy a Ferrari instead of a model of a normal brand car maker which has similar specs.

Maybe (the marketing department of) Microsoft would like to be that association, I don't know.

P.S.
To be clear, I like PC's, love to build my own from scratch, having only 6 (miserable!) hours of Apple's System 9 under my belt and think Apple is way overpriced.
The only good thing about Apple is that they have a decent licensing schema for home use since OS X. Microsoft should have learned from that example and offer something similar or better instead of that half-a**ed attempt that they have now for Vista/Win7.

afa the family licensing goes, a lot of software these days is being sold with a license of the type "use on as many PCs as you own personally."  For instance Sandboxie, or DVD-Rebuilder.  Even though DVD-Rebuilder has a copy protection or activation scheme or whatever you want to call it, the developer allows 5 simultaneous installs and as the installs age, they drop off the list.  This means you don't have to send an email every time you want to install on another PC.  Effectively it just prevents 200 people installing using one email address for the activation.

I'm told back in the old days the auto insurance companies used to insure the driver.  The guy could park one car, and then drive away in another and as long as both cars were legally registered, since they guy could only drive one car at a time, he was covered.  Now they want to insure each individual car, but then insure the driver too(are you under 25? smoke?  wear pink shirts on national holidays?)  It's both ends against the middle.

I don't expect a Linux type free license but there should be some sensible licensing.  Not "by opening this package you agree to the terms you can only read by opening the package because they are printed in a booklet inside the shrink wrap."