As a software and systems guy, I always appreciated that I had support for Office, browsers, Flash, etc. while at the same time having a viable UNIX-like system to develop software from. The platform supports a lot of open-source software painlessly through the third-party brew system.
Honestly, that's probably the biggest thing. In academia and industry (I worked in both), being able to cover that much ground on one laptop was worth the added cost, especially when the laptops were solid and lasted a long time, and the price included a lot of free software that isn't so free in Windows (I'm talking about you, Xcode, and you GarageBand, etc. etc.).
Obviously, things change over time, and I switched to Macs back in 2007; nowadays, I cover a lot of ground quite well just using Ubuntu or Mint. When Windows came out with their Ubuntu sub-system I thought, oh I totally get why they're doing that. My boss was like, I don't see the point, and I laughed, well of course you don't, you don't actually do this stuff anymore!:)
At the time, there was also a lot of appeal for a system that 'just worked'. I mean, I switched back in 2007 and I showed my friends - it's got an ntp client - I don't even have to set the time! How cool is that? Now of course, Windows has that too. Things have changed.:) Would I ever change back? Well maybe, if the Windows Ubuntu thing becomes solid enough, and maybe if I found a good Windows laptop that was significantly cheaper than a MacBook.
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As a software and systems guy, I always appreciated that I had support for Office, browsers, Flash, etc. while at the same time having a viable UNIX-like system to develop software from. The platform supports a lot of open-source software painlessly through the third-party brew system. Honestly, that's probably the biggest thing. In academia and industry (I worked in both), being able to cover that much ground on one laptop was worth the added cost, especially when the laptops were solid and lasted a long time, and the price included a lot of free software that isn't so free in Windows (I'm talking about you, Xcode, and you GarageBand, etc. etc.). Obviously, things change over time, and I switched to Macs back in 2007; nowadays, I cover a lot of ground quite well just using Ubuntu or Mint. When Windows came out with their Ubuntu sub-system I thought, oh I totally get why they're doing that. My boss was like, I don't see the point, and I laughed, well of course you don't, you don't actually do this stuff anymore! :)
At the time, there was also a lot of appeal for a system that 'just worked'. I mean, I switched back in 2007 and I showed my friends - it's got an ntp client - I don't even have to set the time! How cool is that? Now of course, Windows has that too. Things have changed. :) Would I ever change back? Well maybe, if the Windows Ubuntu thing becomes solid enough, and maybe if I found a good Windows laptop that was significantly cheaper than a MacBook.