[BloodEagle]

Apple computers and PCs have different roles to play in the market and should occupy different niches.  If we could convince people who know very little about computing to switch to MacOS and leave those who know what they're doing on Windows (and simultaneously convince Microsoft that their OS's should be geared towards power users and not the "I just want to watch movies and surf the web" crowd) the entire computer market would be in a much better position.

Are you running for office? 

[Mongoose]

I've had very limited experience with Macs over the years, but I do know that, while taking a class in a room filled with OSX (not sure of the exact version) machines a year or two ago, there were some fundamental UI traits that just seemed plain counter-intuitive.  For instance, take the Close button.  On just about every OS I've ever used, that little X in the upper-right corner translates to "end program."  It's worked like that on Windows since 3.1 (or at least 95), it works like that on Solaris, and it works like that on at least two distros of Linux that I've used (Fedora and Knoppix).  And yet, when I click that friendly X button in OSX...it closes the window, not the entire program.  No, to close the entire program, I'd have to go up to that annoyingly ever-present menu bar and select from a drop-down list.  Sense it does not make.

Sure, this is a very tiny anecdote, but I'm kind of the opinion that, if an OS can't even manage to do the close window thing right, I don't have much of an impetus to explore it further. 

[tinfoil]

That is damn irritating

[blowfish]

Or just press Apple-Q

[Nuke]

You know there are a lot more OS's beyond Windows and Mac OS right? 

unfortunately theyre all 2 star oses. i suspect mac osx may be a 3 star os, i dont know ive never used it.

So wait, you have never used Mac OS X but you say it's good compared to some other OS's you may have never used? Talk about a leap in logic...

i have used old macs, and im talking mac classic here, and for its era those were awesome. the equivalent pc was still running dos. macs were using what power pc chps, im not to familiar with the architecture but it was more closed. the ibm architecture was fully open, save the custom bios which was later clean room reverse engineered and made so called clone pcs possible, what was essentially the birth of what we now call the x86 architecture. it has matured to the point that mac decided to just make x86 machines instead of its usual exotic architectures it used in their older machines.

This is somewhat laughable, the x86 architecture has nothing to do with IBM other than the fact they used it, since it's just the intruction set used firstly by the Intel 8086 (hence the x86) which was reused in most of their processors eventually having the popularity they enjoy today. As for Mac deciding to use x86 because they have "matured" is something mighty strange to say since the x86 architecture precedes the power pc one by at least 15 years. Their choice was simply made because IBM was planning to stop making power pcs.

that was the best i could do while drunk
had i been sober id have actually double checked my facts.

[Dark RevenantX]

You can assemble a high-end PC for $2000 quite easily.  MacBook Pro's start at $2000.  A PC laptop with the same basic usage and functionality can be had for as little as $1200.

For $1200, I can just about get any PC (custom built by myself, of course, reduces the price a lot), provided the part's aren't on the highest 15% of the performance spectrum.  From 0-100 on the performance spectrum, once you reach 85, you're at the best value for performance ratio IMO (TECHNICALLY this would be 60%, but I don't settle for garbage like I had done for the majority of my life).  From 85 to 100 comes a tripling of price, likewise from 85-30 comes a price cut in thirds.  Not exactly a fair curve, is it?

I guess the point of this is to say that Macs are overpriced but the OS isn't.  For $1250 I can get a pretty fast quad core, tri-sli compatable motherboard, 4gb of ram, 640gb hard drive, 2x 9800GTX video cards, a computer case, and 750W power supply.  That's pretty damn high end because it smoothly "Very High's" Crysis at a reasonable resolution and antialiasing factor.  For $1250, I can get... a Mac Mini.