Why use Mac?

Apple not being a commoditized brand means, you're sure about what you're buying. Students (coming to gamers in a while) buy the Macbooks (Black/White doesn't matter!), Pros buy Macbook Pros (at least you agree it is the epitome of industrial design!), and for the rest of the junta, who just need to "consume" media (not my words!), their's the Air. If you need a desktop, life is a lot simpler, 20", 24" or the God-of-all-desktops, the Mac Pro (Anyone who says that Apple doesn't allow you to customize your system, has definitely not been introduced to the Mac Pro!)

I've been using computers since 1st grade, which would've been around 1990! Of course, the initiation ceremony was the "Bad command or filename" (if you've used MS-DOS, you might remember it!) And, by now, I have used the whole gamut of things, from MS-DOS to Windows Vista, Solaris 7 to 10 and RHEL 3 to 5. I trust that gives my views some credence if I speak of my personal experience with computers. Oh yes, I forgot that the Symbian (S60) is by no means a lesser OS, if you start to get into it's intricacies! [I guess you'd agree that I know more than "Jack s***" about computers!]

To start with, a new OS does take some time getting used to, and unless you use it exclusively day in and day out, it can remain elusive to some people! Since I have tried quite a range of operating systems, and all in a "production" environment, I found Mac OS X to be the most intuitive! Since "dude" mentions that he "tried" and failed, I would like to know anything in particular that he finds most useful on a Windows and was counter-intuitive on a Mac. Maybe there was no one around to show you the way the first time around!

Maybe many of you will understand that the "uber-geeks" are mostly *nix users. This is a well-known fact that although they can install their flavour of the penguin on a Windows machine as well, as long as they have the money, they choose a Mac as their portable of choice, at least! This is not because of the styling-details (maybe partly so!), but because, for one, the Mac OS X is 100% POSIX compliant, and hence, the "Command Prompt" is not a home-brew crippled utility for disaster-recovery, but the omni-powerful xterm that linux-gurus crave for when they want to get things done! Hence the saying, "It was too difficult to make Windows reliable and safe, so they made UNIX beautiful!" [I hope you get which flavour we're talkin about!]

Also, "dude", I'm not a company spokesperson, but since Linux doesn't require Boot-Camp to install on a Mac, I suspect Apple, while opening up it's hardware to all sorts of users, found out that the Windows community would be crippled because of lack of standardization in terms of drivers, etc, and hence, the need to provide potential Windows users with the Boot-camp utility. It probably wasn't insecurity!

Just to add, Apple fell and fell and fell in the 90s, and not like "dude" said, rose under the iMessiah! Jobs had been fired from his company during that period! Look it up for one of the greatest Phoenix(rise-from-the-ashes)-stories of modern times!

For "schumi":
1. Yes, I can't get over the fact that I don't have to keep running an anti-virus all the time on my machine! In fact I have none installed! And, I am officially allowed to VPN on to my company's network, while Windows users without a complete set of "anti-terror" paraphernalia provided by the company, are prohibited from even trying to connect! Now, you would trust a company where data security and IT systems uptime is of paramount importance, with their judgement, right? Plus, the amount of money I paid for the processor and the RAM, are all coming to my use, and not like Pakistan's budget, all going into "defence"!

2. Microsoft Visual Studio is paid, and may I add, mighty expensive! Before you point out, the Express Editions of the Visual Suite of languages is a joke for serious developers! While Apple provides you Xcode development environment for free even for download! [You don't need to purchase a new Mac for that either!] To add to that, I have never heard of "cross-compilation" inside Microsoft Visual Studio, but, since Xcode relies upon GCC and similar compilers, it is quite easy to set up cross-compilations for *nix as well as Windows. At best, you can say, what Apple allows you to do for free, Microsoft charges money for, although I suspect it is not very easy to do on Windows, at the very least!

And, just for the sake of mentioning, I do the following things on my Mac "out-of-the-box", without a single software extra being installed from anywhere else, freeware or otherwise (except those utilities provided by Apple):
1. Stream music to my N95 (yes, I agree that the iPhone isn't a serious smartphone yet. See, no fan-boy! )
2. Host my own web-site on the in-built Apache server on my Mac
3. Remote login via SSH from my office desktop, or better still, VNC into my machine to use it with the full GUI! [I don't yet VPN into it, although that is possible too]
4. Chat with MSN, Yahoo! and Gtalk users with iChat (Oh, how I hate that small "i" in front of everything, as opposed to the whole damn "Microsoft" or "Windows" before every piece of software ever written, not even counting the "Home Edition", "Professional Edition", "Mohalla Edition" as suffix!)
5. With iPhoto, iMovie, etc, I don't need Photoshop or even GIMP till I need to do some really professional job! Since iPhoto takes plugins, which nearly every one with a little bit of coding knowledge can make, you might not need to pay a lot for some small things you need as add-ons, instead of the whole suite!)
6. Used Garageband (see, no "i"!) to create a little bit of my own music! Some of my colleagues run their own band and use the same software to create music. A studio that is intuitive, and free!
7. "Fast-format" any report for my office-work into HTML, etc using iWeb.
8. Run the computer without re-starting for weeks at a stretch! The damn thing simply doesn't slow down, leave alone crash!
9. Watch movies with upto 3 other people without everyone having to squint to see the image from different angles! (Yes, the screen isn't just gorgeous, it has a wider viewing angle than most "commoditized" notebooks!)
10. Back-lit keyboard and ambient light sensing screen brightness control means that day or night, I can use the computer the way I want to!
11. Sync with most major cell-phones, data like Contacts, Calendars, etc, without a full "PC Suite" kind of application!
12. And, just like the "Prancing Horse", the "3-pointed star" or the "Big M", the "glowing Apple" is very much a sign that this computer will be a pleasure to use! [I just love seeing it glow-in-the-dark!]

By the way, though I am no Steve-worshipper, I don't understand the problem you have with the people who are! If it's fine to say "Cricket is my religion, Sachin is my God!", I guess the same applies here. Cults are formed by only for things/people/phenomenon that belong to the extremes! And, rest assures, Apple doesn't belong to the abyss!

PS: Thanks Apple for correcting my spelling mistakes throughout this looooong "Fast-Reply"! [This happens inside virtually every application that you run on Leopard at least.]