I used to hate Macs, but Apple have made 2 clever decisions recently that changed that... first they switched to Intel CPUs making it far easier to convert existing applications to Mac, secondly they build their Mac OS on top of BSD... so you have a "bash" terminal and (nearly) all the "linux commands" at your disposal, and the interface ("window manager") is WAY better than anything Solaris or Ubuntu could hope to pull off (have you seen the size of the dialog windows in Ubuntu 9.10?). The best of Linux, replacing the crappy window managers with something far superior, applications with native ports (eg: World of Warcraft, soon to be all the Half-Life Source and Telltale games, ScummVM, even Microsoft Office etc) that make life so much easier than trying to run them on Linux. It might be worth mentioning that there's also a Mac port of "wine"... just in case you need to run something that there isn't a Mac vesion of ;)

As if that wasn't enough to win me over, Macs also do something wonderful from the good-old-Dos-days... keep all the files for an application self-contained (often in a single ".app" file) in ONE place, unlike Windows which needs "Common Files", DLLs in your Windows directory, and it's a folder in "Program Files" - why can't I just put the application where I want it, and run it from there? What about uninstinalling an app on Mac OS? Well you just drag it (normally in your "Applications" folder) to Trash - doesn't get much simpler than that.

Everything "just works", sure there was some "getting used to" having come from Windows, but everything makes enough sense. I'm sure at some point I'll come across something that annoys me, but I've pretty much got all the programs I use daily setup and running on my new MacBook, and everything's working great. My friend even got his 3G through his Nokia cellphone working better on his MacBook Pro than he could on his Windows 7 HP laptop - all he did was plug it in and his Mac detected and setup everything. The quality of the hardware is also brilliant, everything is properly finished off and solid - the way it should be.

I bought my MacBook so I could develop apps for my iPhone - yes, I bought one of those too. The iPhone is without any doubt the best cellphone in the world - especially if you "jailbreak" it, which allows you to install all kinds of extra programs and games on it, even "Bochs" which is an open source virtual machine app (yes, that means you you can run Windows XP on your iPhone). The iPhone, like Mac OS, is built on BSD which means you basically have a Linux box in your pocket - I can SSH into, and out from, my iPhone and even open a terminal on my phone itself. How about setting it up as a wireless access point (should there not be a wireless connection around, and you want to share your 3G connection with a wireless device... like an iPad). You can also get a "video-out" cable which allows you to connect your iPhone to a TV, projector, etc - perfect for business presentations, or just playing games on a bigger screen (it also has an "audio-out" plug, so you can connect it to your sound system).

There seems to be a huge element of "simplicity" in iPhone apps, and I actually prefer the iPhone app versions of YouTube, eBay and Facebook to the browser versions we all know. You just finish thinking that everything you need or want is missing, only to realize you don't actually know what it is you're missing... you're just so used to having far more menu items, tabs, drop downs and buttons than you actually need. Simple, pretty, and efficient.

Moving away from "Macs" and more towards "Apple" quckly, it's no secret that Apple have pretty much kicked Adobe Flash's butt - something I'm happy about, I've hated Flash for nearly as long as it's been around - sure the interactivity of it, being able to watch videos and play games, is cool... but it eating up your system resources and crashing so often isn't. Steve Jobs (of Apple) said that Flash is no longer needed thanks to HTML5. Microsoft's head of Internet Explorer agreed (that's right, Microsoft agreeing with Apple, can you believe it). Opera have also gotten on board and echoed the two operating system giants. Not a good time to be Adobe. Apple are also coming out with (or, possibly "stealing") some really exciting technology.

Admittedly Steve Jobs and Apple aren't all good, I'm sure anyone with that much power is probably at least a little corrupt... but I have two uber-geeky devices, that work flawlessly and let me do all kinds of "l33t" things. Am I a "fanboy"? I certainly hope not. Do I think Apple have some awesome devices, that I'm able to do everything (and more) that I could/would with non-Apple alternatives? Yes. Would I buy the next iPhone and MacBook? Definitely. I might even end up selling my PC to replace the 2nd had 2.1GHz MacBook I bought, with a brand new MacBook Pro i7 and use it as my "main" machine.

I have been converted, and I'm enjoying every minute of it. It's easy to hate Macs... when you haven't tried one.