I'm guessing the people posting at the beginning of this thread were just ignorant of OS X, they're probably talking about the crash prone OS 9. OS X is a new operating system that really is totally unrelated to os 9.
I'd agree Apple (the company) sucks, and the hardware is rediculously overpriced. HOWEVER, it is the only computer that will run OS X. And OS X is a dream OS for geeks like me. Has the stability of BSD (based on it) and a GUI that puts GNOME or KDE to shame. I love how it keeps all it's settings in a little xml file for each app in the user's library/prefs folder. You can go right in those and poke around to your heart's content. You can also delete them if you screw them up and they get recreated on the fly. There is no idiotic registry that gets corrupted and is filled with unintelligible gibberish.
OS X is amazingly stable (never had a crash in the year I've used it-- not ONE. No conflicts, no driver issues, no bluescreens.)
Amazingly stable. Part of this is because they have a pretty tight handle regarding what goes into the machine (one could call this a disadvantage too). Typically, they're decked out from the factory (which also makes them expensive) and none of the hardware has "issues" with other components. When you burn a cd, it always works the exact same way every time. My XP box seems to choke when I do more than 6 things at once. The mac never seems to. I even have that serenescreen fish tank as my desktop pattern (using xBack). Anyone know if you can do that on an XP box (use an opengl screensaver as a desktop background?)
About the only things you can say bad about apple are the hardware and the idiotic marketing, they need desperately to switch to intel/amd and ditch the powerpc. They also need to fire all the marketing idiots. That switch ad campaign is for losers.
Anyway, my whole point was: if they made os X for intel, I guarantee you'd all install it in a second and quickly pee your pants after seeing how well it works. It gives XP a run for it's money and makes linux look sad.