The lack of a delete key never bothered me in Mac OS X since every single text field gives you bloody Emacs shortcuts. If anything, it's more convenient to be

The lack of a delete key never bothered me in Mac OS X since every single text field gives you bloody Emacs shortcuts. If anything, it's more convenient to be able to do Ctrl-A, Ctrl-f, Ctrl-f, Ctrl-d, Ctrl-d than reach all the way over to Home, hit right arrow twice, then hit Del twice, especially when you use caps lock as Ctrl. You can kind of do the same in Linux (GTK+ has emacs keybindings you can enable inside text fields as well), but it'll always work better in Mac OS X because they have the Command key and forced everyone to make good, consistent use of it, so using Ctrl for emacs shortcuts usually doesn't clobber anything. Honestly, globally available emacs keys and the ability to run Photoshop/Premiere Pro/Cubase/etc. without giving up my UNIX-like commandline are the two major reasons I like using a Mac. Quirks with Finder don't bother me since I only use it to browse files -- almost everything else, like moving or copying files, I usually do using the commandline anyway. Things are also more consistent and more stable with a Mac, since they tailor the hardware and software to specifically match each other and Apple is very big on getting developers to follow their UI conventions. I also enjoy using multi-touch gestures on the generously sized touchpads they have on the newer Macbooks and Macbook Pros. But other than that, there isn't anything Mac OS X has to offer that Linux doesn't provide, assuming you're using it on well-supported hardware (which can be hit or miss when shopping sometimes). Everything really is slower on a Mac too. All the file operations are hooked into Spotlight so it can keep track of all your files for a search feature people like me never use, and I don't think HFS+ performs that well to begin with. Not to mention the hardware is a weak compared to equivalently priced PCs. Even so, I still find that everything's more than fast and responsive enough for me, and you'll always be able to find someone who'll pay a good price for your 1-year old Macbook Pro, making upgrading to the latest model that much cheaper.