For me, the matter of deciding between OS X and Linux is one of responsibility. When I buy an Apple laptop, Apple accepts responsibility for things like making

For me, the matter of deciding between OS X and Linux is one of responsibility. When I buy an Apple laptop, Apple accepts responsibility for things like making sure that the hardware and the operating system work well together. Apple also makes sure that updates are (generally) compatible with existing hardware, up to a point at which they no longer support the hardware, but that line in the sand is clear. It's easy for me to understand where support ends. Apple is very good at this. Yes, you will hear gripes from people about issues with Apple hardware/software, but relative to the rest of the industry (which is the pragmatic measure), they're way ahead of the game. Contrast this with Linux. Yes, I can get a laptop that has good Linux support, but ultimately, I'm responsible for compatibility between hardware and software. I can pay for Canonical for support, but I believe a large part of Apple's success in building great compters has to do with the fact that they own responsiblity for both the hardware and the software. At the end of the day, OS X is unixy enough (it was "UNIX certified", at least at one point) to make it a suitable development environment for Unix-like software. Combine this with the opportunity to not have to think about hardware and software compatibility, and the combination keeps a significatn number of users from making the switch to Linux.