I got interested in Apple after OS X came out and bought one of the original white G3 iBooks. It's a great OS really. Streamlined and intuitive. It works right out of the box and you don't have to go around tinkering with things if you don't want to. Being a tinker-er it's just nice to sit down at something at the end of the day that just works.

On the other hand it is also powerful. A rich CLI and access to literally thousands of open source applications. Quartz is pretty amazing visually. Full and smooth animations right in the GUI thanks to hardware acceleration from just about any OpenGL card. Pre-emptive multitasking. Perfect font smooth. Drag and drop application installation. Never, ever having to install a driver. Lots of other things.

I'm not wed to Apple hardware which I guess is good given the switch to Intel. Where they impress me is the finishing touches and how every inch of their total package is by design. This is apparent just by the care taken to design the packaging their hardware comes in.