MU_Engineer :
A lot of keyboards are crap. The ones that come with inexpensive OEM desktops are absolute garbage and even ones that come with expensive OEM desktops are typically not that great. I have used many keyboards and have found Apple desktop keyboards to be very mediocre. They have a very light, squishy keystroke that I do not like. They are also less durable than a decent other OEM keyboard if my relatively limited sample of a hundred or so Macintosh keyboards in a few computer labs over five years is any indication. Apple keyboards used to be pretty decent though as I used the ones on Apple IIs, LCs, and PowerPC 60x Power Macs and they were fine- it was when Apple went to the polycarbonate-shell units and the horrible puck mouse of the first iMac that the quality went way downhill. Probably the best OEM keyboards I have used recently are the ones Dell ships to be abused on OptiPlex business computers, but even those are only so-so.
The new iMac keyboard (the flat, aluminium one that macgirlfriend said about) is a great keyboard, I completely agree with you over the polycarbonate shelled one, that was a godawful keyboard! Utterly horrid, didn't like it at all...
MU_Engineer :
Don't even get me started on laptop keyboards. Apple and Sony have the worst laptop keyboards out there. The "Chiclet" style keyboard in the MacBook died out in the mid 1970s for a reason- they were HORRIBLE. But yet Apple and then Sony decided to bring them back. They are absolutely terrible to type on, even compared to the rest of the manure pit that is the laptop keyboard selection today.
See for me, my PowerBook keyboard is fantastic, but laptop keyboards are generally far worse than even a mediocre desktop one.
MU_Engineer :
Virtual desktops were introduced in X11 desktops on Unix a long time ago. Apple just inherited it when they bought out NeXT and based OS X of NeXTstep. MS does support virtual desktops on Windows through the MS Virtual Desktop Manager power toy. It's clunky compared to the desktop switching on Unix, particularly if you use a hardware-composited desktop and get all of the eye candy, but it's still there.
Sorry, should have clarified, I know it was nothing new in the world of OS's (but new to OS X). I was just comparing the main two OS's in the home/desktop environment (no doubt you're going to tell me all of your computers run Ubuntu! :lol: ). I didn't know that MS had a virtual desktop, never even heard of it. Which tells you pretty much all you need to know about it really...
MU_Engineer :
All right, I'll try to do my best to summarize why somebody might want to buy a Macintosh over another brand of OEM computer:
1. You want to run MacOS X.
2. You like how they look compared to another computer or want one for the cachet.
3. You qualify for some discount on Macintoshes that makes them less expensive than another OEM machine of identical specifications.
Otherwise, a Macintosh computer is virtually identical to an OEM computer from another vendor. They all use the same processors, same chipsets, and many of the other internal components are similar if not identical. It's not like it was in the past where Macintoshes had different processors inside.
That's where you're wrong. My Mac doesn't use any components you could find in any OEM machine.
My PowerBook is a Power PC based machine (the forerunner to the MacBook Pro), as you said, an older Mac.
I have no desire to buy a Core 2 based machine, none at all. I bought mine because I had very little knowledge of OS X and wanted to use it more (because I'd enjoyed using it on my housemates eMac and new iMac), in exactly the same way I want an eee to mess around with Linux. I do indeed like the look of my PowerBook, cracking looking machine and very well made. Utterly solid! And as mine was an older machine, the discount point is not applicable. That and I wouldn't be eligible for any of the discounts anyway! (Not including an old university pass I still have that's still valid for a couple more years. One they never took off me when I quit!
😀 ).
(along with Perl, VB .NET, JAVA,,etc). So I can be a POWER user 
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram