New Mac

Thats because of the way both platforms have been built. PCs started off command line based and were designed to be modular (easily to remove and add bits), MACs were designed from the ground up to be easy to use, and have always had a graphical interface. As they've grown, the MAC has always stayed close to its roots, whereas the PC has had to evolve a decent OS.

I remember reading somewhere that the MAC OS has been in continuous development since 1984, and Windows is around 2 years behind that in terms of time spent on it, so the MAC always had a head start.

The two are fairly closely matched nowadays, however the MAC OS swings it for me - I've come from exactly the opposite background to you forks, I've used a PC for the last 18 years and only recently come to using a mac, and I think they're really intuitive and easy to use.

statics points about the hardware are spot on too - however I don't feel that apple using x86 hardware is a bad thing. It may encourage the takeup of the mac OS for people who already own PCs and that can only raise the bar and give windows some competition, maybe force it to improve more quickly. The hardware thing is nail on too about using cheap built in sound cards etc - for those of you who are gamers on here, it's the equivalent trying to run Crysis on an on-board intel graphics card.

What really annoys me are the people who claim one platform/OS is better than the others - both macs and pcs have their strengths and weaknesses. I should know, I use windows/linux/mac os on a daily basis. They all have their good and bad points. So leave the fanboi wars to the other forums on the net, where no doubt it's been argued over hundreds of thousands of times now