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Gustaf Lindber wrote:
That was a good read but I think you missed one thing that Apple does rather good and that's design. Many who buy Macs do it because of the sleek, sexy, white design.
Furthermore, the GUI's seem to be converging more and more. Apple took some stuff from different Linux dists and Microsoft picked up a bunch of stuff from OSX. The end result looks more and more alike and now that's the hardware is the same will there soon be no difference?
I certainly agree with you there. That is why people often pay so much for a Mac and why I prefer a plain beige box with lots of ventalation. I don't consider my tools to be furniture. They don't sit on end tables for guests to see. I'm not sure I want to pay so much more for stylish looks to the cases.
I have some computers for submission of layouts. Two of those are Macs,one an old 9500 AVID unit that's been CPU upgraded and has 6 PCI slots and one is a Yikes upgrade. I have a Linux box that serves as my main network server with DHCP software and six NICs. That's my router and holds a parity array of drives for backup. It also serves as a place to test application code meant for clients with unix systems. I also have a Free-BSD box for that. I run an old Windows advanced server as the ripper for the two Macs. I need those old Macs less and less and will probably dismantle that setup soon. I may add a new Mac for fun.
Then I have several Windows PCs, my main working one which is a quad core running Vista, most of which is disabled and made to look XP Pro-ish. It includes two small Raptors striped and a 650 gb photo drive. Theres a Core 2 Dell Laptop and my guest house where my elderly mother lives where her XP Home machine resides. Most of the GUI is hidden on it to make is very very simple. One last Windows box for work, mostly loaded with Borland and MS applications development software and that BSD box with application dev software. Various complilers on each including an ADA compiler where I make a living. There has to be tow or three others not hooked up around the workshop in various condition of being pulled apart and various rare issues. I'm a bit of a packrat.
I used to have a small dev firm. Now I work for a huge company and am a couple of years from retirement. I'll probably continue freelancing ADA and occasional C++ work until I kick the bucket. When I say C++, it's for when they demand OOPS and source. Otherwise I revert back to old school structured work in my jury-rigged C but compiled in ++. I don't think as well in OOPs and love my lowly pointers.
Like others here, I've not been compromised in years and years. No malware nor trojans or even 3rd party cookies much. I've not seen a crash in years except for two months ago when a power supply failed. That supply was at least five years old and left on 24/7. I did have some kid attempt to access via my wireless access point. I use an HTML page swiped from a Netgear router as a GUI on the Linux server for accessng the DHCP. It was funny. My Windows and Mac boxes are all pretty secure from the outside. You want to make your stuff secure, just add a NAT router even if you have only one machine. That beats most any soft firewall you can have PC or Mac.
As far as Macs having superior designed hardware, I'd really have to disagree. That might have been true back in the day of beige boxes, but ceased with the iMac lines. Even Mac monitors have come under fire. Only the 24 inch or better are IPS design. The 20 inch iMac is of the cheapest twisted neumatic type and not capable of "millions of colors," not to mention that they color shift with the slightest shift in viewing angle. Not good for graphic development or photography and nearly impossible to calibrate effectively. Don't believe, Google "apple, monitor, law suite." They are mostly made in China with not the best QA. Many of the part for PCs are also made in China, but are assembled here, though the QA isn't much better.
The quad core box I'm typing on right now is the first machine I've not built myself since they 80286 days.  They have become so cheap and I'm getting to the point where's it's just not worth it to me. This box was purchased less than 2 months ago and then modified for my purposes. It's an HP Pavilion I bought from CompUSA for only $369. It has 4 gigs of DDR2, an AMD Phenom x4, 500 gig SATA drive, DVD/CD burner with lightscribe. USB 2.0 built in card reader and several other thingies. $369, unbelievable! I added a good Open GL video board, the two striped Raptors, and a 640 SATA, removing the 500. I reinstalled the OS, not putting in the junk, added a 24 inch Samsung cheapy monitor and some better speakers and this box is great. It's way way cheaper than a similarly configured Mac and plenty fast though not bleeding edge. My days of clocking the heck out of CPUs, Vid boards and storage sub-systems are over. I would imagine that this cheapy HP that's been modified will smoke most Macs under the Xenon powered pro models and even them if they don't include striped drives, and at what cost?
As far as the OS is concerned, I don't care if it's XP, Vista or Windows 7. Under the lipstick they aren't really enough different to make me jump. I'd have installed an old XP copy on this new box except it came with Vista and I kind of wanted 64 bit so I could address over 3 gigs of memory. I didn't have an old 64 bit XP pro copy. The downside was that the Vista Home Premium didn't have support for drive arrays and so I had to upgrade. Waste of money and should kick MS. Pain in the butt.
Again, the point is what price you're willing to pay for any perceived benefit a particular brand or OS might provide, and what myths you might be willing to believe. If you like Aperture over Lightroom II, get a 24" iMac. They are a pretty nice box, but expensive. You do get a nice IPS monitor. If you want security, buy a NAT router. The wired ones are cheap and wireless ones aren't bad either, but remember to turn off the wireless if you only have one machine and don't need that part.
Now back to photography which is fun and interesting. Computer stuff is really boring to me. It absorbs my whole working day when I could be out taking images.
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That's a huge problem for a great majority of "Windows" problems I've seen - it's not Windows at all, it's the user.