From a NY Times Bestseller

[Paul Lussier]

Christopher Schmidt <crschmidt at crschmidt.net> writes:

>> I guess what I'm really wondering, are modern Macs just PCs with fancy 
>> cases?

They're PCs with fancy cases, running a fairly decent OS that's more
or less guaranteed to work properly with the hardware it's running on.

Asking this question isn't much different than asking the same thing
about Sun these days.  There's a lot to be said for proprietary
hardware, though these days, that seems to morphing into "tightly
controlled and specified" hardware.  In other words, the vendor is
essentially specifying in a highly regimented manner exactly what
hardware will and won't work, and only allowing you to purchase things
which they are willing to support.

For this, you pay a slightly higher premium, and they save on stupid
support calls.

I like the Mac for it's hardware quality.  I use it more as UNIX/Linux
system than I do as a Mac however.  I run X windows and FVWM in such a
way that looking at my Mac is almost exactly like looking at my Linux
systems either at work or home (or a Solaris system with my
environment for that matter).  I occassionally use the Mac software,
iTunes, and Firefox mostly.  But in general, it's a UNIX system with a
shiny outer shell that has by far, the best "resume-from-suspend" of
any laptop I've ever used.  And the hardware has taken far more of a
beating than I could ever reasonably expect a non-battle hardened
PC-based laptop to take :)
 
> (Of course, the reasons why I'm probably going to pay the $200 Black Tax
> to get the black macbook when I buy a new computer are harder to
> quantify. They're more along the lines of "SHINY".)

It's probably the same justification I paid the U2 iPod tax when it
first came out :)
-- 
Seeya,
Paul