Neil, I love the way you try to disguise your obvious distain for Macintoshes by attempting an "objective and detached" tone of voice...
Neil":5pswc5j7 said:
And if all you ever do is use them in a home environment, they are probably as good a choice as anythine else, really...
The people whose Windows machines are refusing to boot would probably disagree with you there.
Neil":5pswc5j7 said:
...albeit an expensive, trendy, skinny-jeans-and-aviators choice, mind.
Ahhh, the objectivity's slipping there Neil!
As I've shown earlier in the thread, Macs don't need to be expensive. With a retro G3 machine, you can "dip your toe" into the OS X water for less than £10.
Neil":5pswc5j7 said:
Try and get them to fit into big iron, though, and they're more awkward than normal Unix or Linix OSs, and more awkward than Windows OSs.
OS X is a descendent of BSD Unix which has been around since 1978.
In my Windows days, getting a PC to join a network involved ensuring that every computer on the network was a member of the same "workgroup", ensuring that every computer had a unique "workgroup name" and ensuring that all computers within the workgroup were using the same networking protocol (NetBEUI, TCP/IP, NetWare, etc...).
When I bought a Mac I discovered that getting an OS X machine to join a network involved plugging an ethernet cable into the RJ45 port and waiting about 7 seconds. Then it was networked.
Neil":5pswc5j7 said:
They're just fine at sitting there, looking cool, browsing, and graphical work, though. Outside of that, though, and they're not enough of one thing or the other.
I don't really care how "cool" my Mac looks -- I need to use applications like
OmniOutliner and
Zengobi Curio which are invaluable to me and have no equivalent on other OSes.