The funny thing is Steve Jobs has always been about open standards, and he still is. Seems odd for a company known to be closed, but its the case.

Steve left Apple, because they wanted to close everything up. When he came back and opened it up again, then thrived again. Examples of open standards with apple:

• The core of OSX and iPhone is open source (Unix type OS called Darwin). Windows is not.
• The document format they use is PDF. MS does not.
• What they are pushing in replace of Flash, is Open standards (HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript). MS pushes Silverlight.
• Apple's video file format, is MPEG-4. MS uses DVR-MS
• iBooks uses ePub, and allows free ePub books
• HTML and the WWW was invented on the NeXT computer (now owned by apple, and the hardware OSX started on).
• Macs are one of the first computers to use Display Ports, and the EFI boot system. Both open standards.
• Apple created FireWire, and made it an open standard
• OSX uses OpenGL for 3D graphics, an open standard. MS uses DirectX
• OSX uses Display Postscript for it's 2D rendering. Not sure what MS uses, but most likely built in house.
• Apple uses ACC for audio. An open standard, and better quality then MP3. MS does as well, but also created WAV.
• Java is part of OSX. MS hates JAVA.
• OSX comes with X86 window manager, and gcc. MS does not.

On the hardware side, Apple is closed, because they are a hardware company. On the software side however, they are far more open then MS.

What makes Apple seem so bad, is one man gets to call all the shots. Apple owns all parts of the ecco system. If Steve Balmer owned all the PC hardware, along with the OS, could you imagine how much more authoritarian he would be? Miles worse then Steve Jobs.

See now you are talking their brand new PCs. All I have to say about those is that they have no place. They are not as open as Linux, and don't run as much programs as Windows. Basically they have none of the benefits and all of the downfalls that come from being in the middle of the two standards, so as far as OSX comes, it has no real benefits.

It has no benefits to you. That does not mean it's bad, or has no benefit. I am in OSX 95% of the time I am not coding, or playing games. The reason is:

• It works VERY well. It never crashes, and I never need to reboot. The uptime on my OS at the moment is 37 days. The only reason it's that short, is a software update required a reboot. In the 4 years I have owned this laptop, it has never crashed.
• I like the UI much better. I use Expose all the time, and not having it in Windows sucks.
• Two finger scroll on the touchpad. Everyone has it now, but I have been using it for 4 years in OSX.
• I like when you close a program in OSX, it doesn't really close. It just removed the window. OSX can get away with this, because it has outstanding memory management. I have a bad habit of closing windows when I am done with an app, and in OSX it doesn't matter. Tweetdeck and mail are still running (good thing).
• Spotlight kicks ass. Windows 7 ripped it off, so I do have that in that os as well, but the Mac version still works better for me.
• Not sure what you mean by "brand new PC's". I am talking about anything with an intel cpu and OSX. That means anything around 4 years old.
• Other then it being Free, there is no advantage to Linux over OSX. Anything you run on Linux, you can run in OSX.
• I run Windows in a VM on my old ass laptop, and it runs great.
• I got this laptop 4 years ago. It came with Tiger. I installed Leopard on it when it came out using the upgrade option, and I installed snow leopard with it came out using the upgrade option. I have yet to reinstall the OS. I don't think I could have gone from XP -> Vista -> Windows 7 without a full install, and I think I have installed an OS on my PC 6 or 7 times in that same time span
• I don't have virus protection on my laptop. I never think about it actually.
• If the laptop is closed and in sleep mode, by the time I open the lid and let go of it, I am restored and connected to the internet.
• And dozens of other things if I wanted to keep typing...

You might not like OSX, but there are many reasons I love it.

See I have never had my Windows 7 box crash since I have used it. Granted I switch between Linux where I code and W7 where I do everythign else a lot. In fact my Linux has crashed more, but that's because I deal with the memory a whole lot.

I use proto launcher in Windows, I have absolutely nothing on my desktop, it's amazing. As for the expose, the alt-tab and the corner desktop does the same thing, in terms of useage.

I am sorry, but I count the 2 finger scroll as a negative. Having the little scroll area on the side of the touchpad is far better for navigating pages.

I hate that in OSX, along with it's default on jumping icon dock. When I want to close a program I want it dead, period, not working in the background. Though I do have a close to tray on my thunderbird. I use IMing exclusively on my phone now unless I have to talk code with someone, so those programs are never even up anymore, but they did clsoe to the tray as well.

Face it, Spotlight is grep. Mac stole it from Linux, don't try to play the copy card on things OSX copied itself.

Linux is more open then OSX. Maybe I wasn't informed well, but I thoght you can't go into the kernel and change things to th way you like them. All the way down to the basic UI you use, suck as KDE or Gnome. OSX is far more restricting than Linux.

I bought my laptop at the start of 2007, the last ones before they came in vista. I am now running W7 Pro and I have never had to reinstall or reformat, then again I never put Vista on the laptop to beign with.

At one point I put OSX on a desktop. I uninstalled it because I never booted into it since there was absolutely no use for it between my then Ubuntu and XP partitions. Now with W7 it seems even more useless.

You should get virus protection, as well as try and scure your Mac. OSX has far more holes in it than Windows, and Apple sucks very hard at maniging security on their platform. Since 2007, I have never had any problems with malicious code of any sort.

I can keep on going and going and shooting down any feature you mention about the usefulness of a Mac.

Yes, and I could continue to refute all your clames. we could replay a million other threads where we go back and forth... that's not the point.

The point is, that I have seen you in more then one thread come from the position of I don't like it or have a need for it, therefor it sucks.

There are dozens and dozens of models of cars, and I am sure there is one that fits you better then all the rest. That does not make the rest shit.

Linux has it's place. Windows has it's place, and OSX has it's place. How your lifestyle and needs fit into what Apple is selling has absolutely nothing to do with Apple, yet it seems to be the metric that you base the companies worth on.

Oh, and spotlight was added to OSX 6 years ago. What was the Linux tool back then that did the same thing?

The thing is that with Windows 7, OSX became utterly obsolete. But I guess you are right. I recently learned, through South Park nonetheless, that there is such a thing as Brazilian Fart Porn. So if there is an audience for that, why not for Macs. However, saying that it is actually better than anything other than superficial details is just a folly.

Just 6 years ago for spotlight? The Oxford Endglish Dictionary Online had draft entries for grep as far back as 2003. Also, Never use the security argument. Even I could probably find some way onto your computer and I have not been in a security class in years.

When I need a text editor, I hit Apple-SpaceBar, type "tex" and hit enter. That's not grep. 

And no, Windows 7 did not make Apple product obsolete. We have gone around on this over and over... how about I set up a senario, and you then make it better with Windows 7...

Let's say I am a 55 year old woman who has never really used a computer much. My kids have moved to another country, and I now want to keep in touch with them. Let's say this woman has no one she can really talk to about computers, but she knows she wants one.

This woman could walk into an Apple store, and as soon as she walks in, a trained customer service rep will come talk to her with a smile, make her feel invited, and find out what her needs are. They will spend hours if needed talking to her about all the features, and demoing all the applications. Now to browse the web, how to send and receive email, and so forth. They will explain about the free workshops they offer in the store to go over topics if she wants more help.

So let's say she then buys a 21" iMac. She takes it home, plugs in a cable, and she is done. 

Where is she going to get this level of treatment if she wanted a Windows 7 PC? Best Buy? Give me a break. There is no Linux option for this woman.

In that case, Apple is the best option for her. Nothing else comes close. For her, and the millions like her, Apple is anything but a shit company.

Now that's just one option. Another is me, a tech savvy person with 5 computers, 1 running Windows Server 2008, and another running Windows 7, yet I sit here tying this in OSX.

I have used dozens of Linux distro's over the years, and yet I sit here in OSX. Do you think I do that just because I care about image? No. I do it because the things I most want in an OS, OSX does better then any other OS I have used.

It might not for you... you like the scroll down the side of the touchpad. I think that sucks. You most likely like two physical mouse buttons, I like clicking the one with two fingers on the touch pad much better. You like apps closing, I like them not.

Neither of us are wrong. For what you like Windows/Linux is better. For what I like, OSX is better. The difference, is I am not discrediting the OS's that fit you, just because they don't fit me. You on the other hand, are.

Good luck getting through my application firewall. Your not going to get to my Mac, or any other computer I have on my network. The only real way anyone is going to screw with me, is if I go to a website with malicious code.

I have yet to run into that problem.

Grep has been in OS X since at least 10.2, and probably back in 10.0 beta. It's a UNIX binary. Spotlight is a substantially different search tool. Spotlight operates off an index which makes it much faster at the expense of a little reliability.

I don't know how they determined how apple is the 2nd most valuable company because according to this Apple made nowhere near the second most amount of revenue or profit. In fact they are outside the top 70 in revenue and their profit isn't the highest either.

I don't see how Apple would be more valuable than Exxon, General Electric, AT&T, Berkshire Hathaway, etc.