It is not entirely brand. For me, I only begrudgingly use a Macintosh laptop because it is better for someone who doesn't want to fiddle, now or in future rel

It is not entirely brand. For me, I only begrudgingly use a Macintosh laptop because it is better for someone who doesn't want to fiddle, now or in future releases of their distribution. At this point given the length of time I've stuck with it I can probably be considered a Linux-on-Workstation die-hard (I have one at work and at home that I use for most Serious Tasks), and I am pretty fed up to have given up on Ubuntu on laptops: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4451792 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4451792 And the meat of my complaints have nothing to do with UI, but the endless finicky regressions, typically having to do with drivers and hardware integrations. Anecdote: my friend and co-worker has an allegedly 'good' piece of Lenovo Thinkpad hardware. He still managed to have a problem on a video driver upgrade on 32-bit (he then switched to 64-bit, where things went better -- did I mention Ubuntu's home page still suggests 32-bit Linux?) and hasn't gotten around to convincing it to talk to an external monitor. He has more patience than me -- mostly out of philosophical stubbornness -- although I suppose we both are stubborn in a way since I'm still buying desktops at every location I work frequently in 2012, and regressed to a Macintosh to fill in the gaps when moving about. It is a disaster.