What's so great about Apple?

I keep hearing people yack up how great Apple is. But so far I am unimpressed. My wife had a Apple laptop when we met, and the mouse port no longer works. When she took it in to the Apple store they told her she'd need to buy a new one. Now, I am not a genius, but if my PC had that problem I could replace the part myself. It's not that hard. And I got an iTunes shuffle for Christmas and it doesn't work either. I took it down to the store and they "fixed it", but still no joy.

My suspicion is that there are easy solutions, but that the store employees are.. stupid. But nevertheless it does not want me to buy more Apple stuff.