Quoted for posterity. Good gawd...didn't realize you had edited/added to this.
I work in, and I do tech support for, a largely windows-using office. I (as you will see in my posts) acknowledge when Windows has the edge, and I am completely open-minded about using the best machine for the job.
When I bought servers, I tried an XServe, and ended up choosing a Quad-core Windows machine running Windows Server 2003 (soon to be 2008) - I use Exchange in place of a Mac OS X based mail server.
As I said - I support these things for a living - the mac, running Mac OS X is hands down the easiest machine to use and to support: I have graduated from 10.1 through to 10.5 with no culture shock or hiccoughs in transfer, and I can't say the same for 2000/XP/Vista - I still have folk that can't find "Save" or "Print" in Office 2007.
I have had similar experiences: Obviously my switcher acquaintances have more success than yours, but I know people that just can't get used to not doing things the Microsoft way. They don't feel comfortable without a virus checker, they worry about the lack of a disk defragmenter, they can't (and don't want to) understand why they can't see the Network Neighborhood, and they can't get used to ejecting DVDs by throwing them in the trash, and feel lost without a C: drive and a BIOS (for a few examples). These people never discover the things that Mac OS X does that Windows can't so, because all they want to do is what they did before, and preferably do it the same way that they have always done it - I get fed up with people saying that they can't use a mac because it has't got a start button. These people do, and should, stay with Windows: that doesn't mean that Windows is better, or even that they think that windows is better - it just means that they don't want to change. This is, coincidentally, the same reason that MS is having such a hard job selling Vista: It is the first time that they have moved far from Windows 95, and the userbase is uncomfortable moving away from what they are happy with.
Mac OS X is still massively more advanced than Windows, but that is not really relevant to most users: It is Unix with a great GUI, and it does 64-bit and multi-processors streets better than Windows (better even than Windows Server), which didn't used to be relevant, but now everyone needs 64-bit and multi-processors, Windows is increasingly falling short.
The hardware has been (since Jobs came back, and Ive designed them) the best designed on the market. I challenge you to find a better designed HDD sled than that in the MacPro, or a better keyboard than the current mac one - the case opening on the mac desktops has been spectacularly well-designed (and still the best available) since at least 2000. The actual parts (HDD, RAM, Video Cards etc.) are standard (although they don't tend to use low end stuff), but how they go together is brilliant. I don't hear the phrase "Intel-Mac hardware", so I can't dispute what it means.
In my circles, when people talk of a Mac, they distinguish the type by either PowerPC or Intel Mac. That's what I meant by "Intel-Mac hardware". And, unless they've changed it and I missed it, Apple has chosen a subset of hardware to certify for use with Mac OS X even though, as the
OSx86 Project has shown, it will run on more than just that subset. Now, I don't know what Apple's qualification for certification is so, even though it will run on other hw, there might be other valid, non-marketing reasons that the certified hardware was limited.
The main reason to use a mac is, and has always been, for those people that don't want to learn to use a computer, but wants to use a computer to do stuff. It is easier to produce a movie in iMovie on a mac than it is on the equivalent on a Windows machine because the OS doesn't get in the way. For someone that wants to tweak and play with the computer, or build their own: people for whom the machine is part of the point of ownership, then a mac is wrong.
Probably the most succinct and accurate statement I've ever heard/seen. Well said christ.
Photoshop works on both, but artists use the mac because they don't have to worry about understanding networking, or avoiding malware, and macs use multiple screens much, much better than Windows (Windows can be forced to use multiple screens, but a novice will have nothing but trouble and frustration with it). This was true, and still is true. (as an example try connecting your laptop to an external screen, set it up as a dual screen with different resolutions on internal and external, and then disconnect the external screen. What resolution do you get on the internal screen? You can't know, because it is a lottery - it doesn't matter whether you sleep, or shutdown, or whatever - Windows hasn't got a clue. What happens when you plug the external screen back in? That's right - you have to set it up again.)
I might have to disagree with you here regarding the multiple monitors. I use a secondary monitor with my laptop all the time and I'm often disconnecting it to take to meetings or in the data center and the only time I've ever had an issue is with the sleep mode. If it's waking setup is different from it's sleeping setup (i.e., I put it to sleep with the external monitor connected but wake it before connecting it back) then it hiccups and my taskbar is invisible. I have to kill explorer.exe and then run explorer.exe to get it back (where most typical users would just reboot). And this was the only on Vista. Since switching to Windows 7 I've yet to have that problem. But this is still just a small issue affecting a subset of users anyway.
Today, for the first time ever, macs have the other edge in that you can, if forced, run Windows on them too - dual-booting (or multiple Oses in any form) is not an option (for any but the most tech-savvy) on a PC.
I used to run a VM of OS X on my laptop, but as you said, the typical user wouldn't have the where with all to accomplish that.
