As much as I dislike these kinds of threads and all the hate flying back and forth, this is a legitimate question and I will try to answer it based on my own experiences. Before that, however, you might want the check out this article:

Living on Air: A Windows guru spends two weeks with a Mac

definitely an interesting read. clarified quite a bit of questions concerning macs.

Ok, now onto my answer. I'm sorry that it is so long, but I feel that I need to get into detail to express my points.

1. Installing programs: .... but the majority of programs are actually "self-supporting" packages, meaning that the program icon you see actually contains everything the program needs. For those programs, installation is a simple copy-operation: you copy the program anywhere you want, most commonly in the Applications folder. If you want to uninstall a program, simply delete/drag it to trashcan. Both ways have pros and cons, but I can make an argument that the drag-to-Applications is easier, though an installation wizard is not much harder to be honest.

fair enough. i can see the advantages to this, but how many programs are like this? How easy would it be to go into said programs' files themselves and edit them to your liking? I mean, i concede to your point because i will accept that the majority of people wont ever touch their "program files" folder in windows, but i often find myself playing with the files inside, so i'm curious. I'm assuming its more specific to the program, i.e. a game like Diablo II will still have its folder repository (otherwise i think i'd hear about more tech support to get it to work for mods) while a standard program wont. Nice feature indeed.

I'd say most programs are like that, and the ones with installers are the exceptions. Like I said, both ways have their advantages: with installers, you can better control the installation of shared resources, but that also makes uninstalling harder. The normal OS X program is an archive and you can freely browse the contents of it, I've never tried changing anything inside a program so I don't know if there are any hurdles to jump there. 

2. General ease of use. This is a thing that is a bit difficult to explain because it is a factor of a great number of things. The foundation is that the OS X is a coherent entity: things work the same way everywhere. Once you get the hang of it, you can use different applications easier since the UI is coherent, and that is thanks to the Cocoa API and Apple design guidelines. That's the foundation that wasn't there in Windows at least up to XP, I haven't used Vista or 7 so I don't know how they are.

The bolded is i think the biggest argument when it comes to ease of use. In this case it seems like the argument is that PCs rely on individual pieces working together (both hardware and software-wise), as opposed to Macs which come with programs that work well with each other. Are Macs still as restrictive when it comes to hardware as they used to be? as in, a few years back you'd have to jump through hurdles to upgrade your Mac due to proprietary hardware, as opposed to simply buying the pieces that would work well on a PC and putting it in a Mac.

I've actually never upgraded anything other than memory on my MBP so I can't really comment on that. I guess that for anything other than the memory and HDD, you're going to face problems because there might not be the necessary drivers / firmware support. Keeping the Mac configurations limited is a choice Apple has made, and it poses problems for some. I think the biggest issue must be the graphics card support, or the lack of available options. That said, there is generally less reason to upgrade your Mac hardware because the OS X generally doesn't slow down with new versions, in fact it sometimes gets faster. And gaming is not really well suited for Macs yet, though some companies are porting their games to OS X.

On top of the foundation, there are a number of extremely useful features that I use daily in my work. Exposé, Spotlight search, TimeMachine backups and QuickLook are the most useful ones, and now that I have gotten used to them I can't really think of going back to working without them. They are really invaluable tools. I use Spaces (virtual desktops) a bit, but the OS X implementation does leave a lot to be desired so I don't include it here.

i cant really comment all that much here. from what i understand, expose brings up windows of the programs you are running, and then you can click it and get to it quicker - that and you can access it by simply pressing an F# key for that matter. Sounds very useful, even if alt-tab does something similar (albeit with smaller windows) - i prefer the mac implementation though. more because its 1 key to press, not two. the others - aside from time machine, which i assume is just Mac's system restore, i dont know how they work. i'll look around in a bit.

Exposé is actually a bit more than that: you can display all open windows in all open applications (except those windows that have been minimized to the Dock), display all open windows in the active application, and display the desktop. And you can assign different functions to "hot corners", for example when I swipe my mouse to the top right corner of the screen, it exposes all open windows in the active application, and bottom right reveals the desktop.

Spotlight searches through your computer for anything you type, it includes the contents of files (such as Word docs, Excel sheets, emails in Mail, calendar, notes, contacts, applications, JPEG metadata etc.) and it does it on the fly. QuickLook lets you view files without opening any applications, so you can quickly check out Office docs, PDF files, movies etc. You just select the file and press spacebar and it instantly opens the file. And TimeMachine is a backup utility that makes the whole thing easy: when you plug in an external HDD, you can use it for TimeMachine backups. After that, whenever you connect that HDD TimeMachine makes hourly backups of your system, and afterwards you can browse the backup history and restore single files, folders etc. with a simple click. It has saved my butt a couple of times when I've misplaced a file.

Then, in addition to the abovementioned, there are a number of smaller but still very useful features/apps that are part of the OS. One example is the virtual keyboard: want to know where you can get a certain special character from your keyboard? Just click the virtual keyboard open, and you'll see what key does what in real time as you press control, alt, shift etc. And you can of course type using the virtual keyboard and mouse/trackpad. It's not needed very often, but it can be handy on those occasions.

im assuming its more that the virtual keyboard is easier to get at? since the windows one is hidden in the accessibilities options folder, so most windows users never even notice it exists.ill give you the benefit of the doubt here and assume that the other smaller features and apps make it worth it and dont have their windows equivalent. 

Maybe it's that, quite honestly I never came across the Windows equivalent in all those years. So yeah, there might be Windows equivalents that I'm not aware of, especially in Vista which I know practically nothing about in practice.

One of the biggest shortcomings of XP was the atrocious networking control it had. I use my computer on several different wireless networks, some of which require different settings. OS X has built on networking location profiles that are easy as 1-2-3 to create, so I just set up the networks once and I'm done with it. With XP I had to manually change the settings for different networks whenever I changed location, again I don't know how Vista handles this. It probably is a lot better than XP.

ill give you this one - i've never had to network since i dont have multiple computers, so i've never expirienced any problems with networking...since i've never had to do it.

It's not having multiple computers, it's having multiple locations where I take my laptop into. Most places have your standard automatic configs via DHCP, but not all. I know some 3rd parties have applications for controlling network profiles in Windows, so it is doable, just that it is such a basic feature IMO that it really ought to be a part of the OS.

Also, the way OS X handles external displays is IMO far superior to what I've encountered in Windows, though even OS X is not a hundred percent perfect. But it does remember the external displays I have used, and the display setup I used with them so when I plug that projector in to give a presentation, I don't have to care about the settings. And when I use a projector/display for the first time, I don't go through the fn-f5 or whatever button merry-go-round that I see so often on PC laptop users do when they are connecting to a projector: I go to the System Preferences -> Displays and click "Recognize displays" and it does just that and right there I can choose the layout and resolution of my display setup.

ill give you this one as well - i've never had problems with it (since i know to press fn-f8 in my case), but to anyone that is unfamiliar with windows won't be sure about what to do and what not.

I've come across this countless times, and these people know how to use their computer: they connect the projector, then press fn-F5 (or whatever) and wait, nothing happens, they press it again, something happens but not what they wanted, press again and repeat until you get the results you want. Still, the big thing is that OS X remembers the display setups: when I go to work and plug in my LCD, it switches the setup so that the LCD is the primary desktop and the laptop screen is an extension of it. When I plug in my projector, it switches to two display setup and uses the laptop as a secondary screen to show me previews of my Keynote presentation slides.

One example of "how things just work" is when I captured video for the first time. I connected my DV camera with a firewire cable, opened iMovie and clicked import video button and that was it. Afterwards, if you want to burn your movie to DVD or export it to Web, iMovie seamlessly connects with iDVD and iWeb. Which all connect with iPhoto and iTunes as well. My entire iPhoto library is accessible right from inside iMovie, as is my iTunes library. And the same goes for all the iSuite programs. While the programs themselves are limited, they work so well together that using them is relatively easy even for a total newbie.

this goes with the above, the programs working well together as opposed to windows' individualistic nature of its programs.

Yes, in a way it is a pity that Microsoft has limited itself to making mostly individual things. They can do suites pretty well, Microsoft Office is a good example of well thought out and working integration and interoperability, but as a whole they could be so much more. Then again, I guess the dominant market position and antitrust law suits are at least partially to blame.

The last thing I'm going to mention is the hardware. You may think that it is 100% same as PCs, but it is not. While a majority of the components are exactly the same, the case is not. The displays are different at least in that Apple displays are "greener" than other laptop manufacturers' displayes. The chassis is different and the design and build quality is IMO far superior, even moreso now with the UniBody Macs. There is of course the MagSafe connector which is really handy, and there is the IR remote control that goes with FrontRow to remotely control multimedia functions (though sadly the IR remote is nowadays not included in the package, my MBP had it). The last thing I'll mention is the trackpad with multi-touch support. My own old MBP only has two-finger scrolling and nothing else, but even that is just incredibly handy. The newer models have pinch in/out for zoom, two-finger rotate, two-finger tap for right click, three-finger scroll, and some four finger gestures for Exposé. You can customize the controls, of course, but the default setup is well thought-out.

ill give you this one as well - the trackpad features sound very interesting and convenient, in particular the zooming. But i would never give up my two mouse buttons for macs single button + option key, but Macs can take regular mice so thats not a large complaint - i do feel that having the option key and one mouse button is retarded though,since i dont think it takes much to have a right click. but thats personal preference.

These issues with mice must be the most commonly held misconception about Macs. The standard Apple mouse has 4 buttons + the scroll ball. The trackpads support "right click" in numerous ways: press two fingers on the pad and click, tap with two fingers, or you can designate the lower right corner of the trackpad to "right click". That, along with the multitouch features make all PC trackpads quite obsolete. And yeah, Mac trackpads are much bigger than PC trackpads which makes them more useful for actual working. The new, buttonless trackpads are really quite huge :)

That's it for now. There are many more things I could mention, but I hope I have managed to explain a bit why I think OS X is easier to use than Windows or Linux. Yeah, I do have some very limited experiences of Linux, and those experiences have not been really supporting that idea that Linux is particularily easy to use.

My responses in green.

About bootcamp: I don't use it, but I don't think it is really that convenient because you have to reboot every time you want to change the OS. When I got my Mac, I also got Windows XP so I could install it on bootcamp, but after awhile I realized that I don't need it and I haven't done it. If I would need to run Windows, I'd rather try Parallels or WMWare.

One thing that is often overlooked when discussing the price of Macs is the resale value. There's a site (www.mac2sell.net) which gives you an evaluation of what your Mac is worth, and according to it my MBP is now worth about 700€ so if (and when) I decide to upgrade to the new unibody models, I can sell the old Mac and get about a 3rd of what I paid for it back.