My Mac was in the shop once - attempting to install Windows XP killed it. The irony left me weeping for days.

I think that if your sample size grows, you'll find that a lot of people that use Apple really love it and don't know why. Similar to the two people you mentioned. But that's not because Apple HAS nothing good: it's because a lot of the things that they do well are hard for most people to quantify.

For me, the best way of describing it is to talk about what it was like to register my machine once it was turned on. It was a typical registration form. I tabbed over to State and typed in an N, expecting to have to hit it three or four times to get to the right letter. Instead, the drop-down list turned into a text field, and I could just type the second letter normally, no problem.

Small, small detail. If I raved about that during a typical OS dick-waving contest, I'd be laughed at. But it's so typical of what makes the Mac so incomparably good: it is incredibly focused on giving users the best possible experience. Not just in terms of things they can name in ads, though I am a fan of all that stuff, too. But in the small details. The things you notice only long enough to feel slightly irritated. The things reviewers would never mention but still stay there.

I think most Apple users stay with Apple for that precise feeling: the feeling that everything just works. It's something that's hard to contrast, because it's something that no other OS really spends much time on getting right. With every iteration of OS X, though, I see a real leap in terms of how good the operating system's become. Leopard beats Tiger in almost every way. Tiger beat Panther similarly.

And it's easy to rib on Mac, to say that it's too glam and too popular. You can pick on Quicktime and say that it's not as good as VLC, or something similar. Doing that ignores the fact that there are things that Mac does that other things simply do not. Take GarageBand, for instance. I think that of all the things I've messed with, GarageBand blows the most people away on first contact. The built-in keyboard, the really comprehensive set of loops... it's not a godsend, but the fact remains that it's there. That, if I wanted to, I could film myself using iSight, compose a soundtrack using GarageBand, and edit it all together using iMovie and iMovieHD/06, is pretty awesome. It gives you a sense of freedom that you don't get using a clunky Dell laptop and using Windows Movie Maker.

Small things. Partly that means philosophy. In Word 08, when you hover over a button it gets larger, and the button ripples. It's slightly distracting, it's ugly, and it's a waste. Microsoft doesn't get the difference between eye candy and functional aesthetic. In Pages, buttons don't do anything when you hover over them, because it's assumed that you know they're buttons. Again: not something it's easy to rave about. But there's this feeling that you're being respected.

Windows fans get mad at Apple users because they're usually too set with what they've got to change. Gamers insult Apple because it doesn't cater much to gamers, which is a fair criticism, but I've found that Boot Camp solves those problems pretty much perfectly. Linux users? That's a tougher crowd, because they believe in a different philosophy. It's true that learning to use a computer that's basically a glorified prompt results in a faster computer. The problem there lies with the steep learning curve. You can't turn on a computer that's like that and expect to know how to use everything. And when you start to use a shell, things slow down. I don't know how fast Leopard is compared to Ubuntu, but it feels a lot faster. Or, not faster. More precise. Much more polished. And Mac is very hackable. Most people choose not to, but if you DO like tinkering, you can tinker.

You can argue that Mac is overpriced. That's a matter of personal taste, but frankly, I'd pay more than I did to get an operating system that's so enjoyable to use. The more you use the Mac, the better it gets. Another small thing: when you have a file open, and there's the little icon next to the file name on the top of the window, the way you can drag that not only to any open folder but into a chat or a mail message or a file upload, that's nice. It saves me a step. If I wanted, I could go even faster with Quicksilver, but I've never installed it. No reason to.

You can argue that people who use the Mac are pretentious. That one gets thrown out a lot even on Hacker News, sadly. Yeah, and people who use Windows are tasteless, and people who use Linux have no design aesthetic. Either way, getting an OS because of stereotypes just doesn't cut it. You get an OS because it's good, period. (Although I DO like the I'm a Mac commercials, it's because I love John Hodgman.)

And I think I must be the sort of person who perfectly fits into the Mac cliche. I'm a college student, and I got my Mac specifically for college. I get called a hipster on occasion, because apparently, liking typography-related t-shirts and The Big Lebowski and disliking Tropic Thunder makes you hip. Most damningly, I'm a writer, and I dabble in poetry. So I fall under the "artsy" umbrella. Never mind that I actually attempt to make money with my writing, or that I dislike most stuff I read (Beckett excluded). Never mind that I'm only an artist in the sense that I try to make art. I've been told that obviously I only got a MacBook is because I want to seem hip and with it.

(Apology at this point, partly because of the length, and partly because this is aimed not only at the OP but at a bunch of much more brutish Mac critics. I don't assume that you're like this bockris, but I feel like I want to complete the thought before you stop. My apologies.)

Anyway: no. I got it because I tested out all the operating systems before I got this one, and because this one was the best. A lot of people who try all 3 settle for the Mac. If you don't, that's okay, but at the same time it means you're going to put up with a lot of crap Apple users don't have to, and some of us get bitchy and remind you about it because some of us are as bad as the stereotype proclaims. I'll also throw in that the Apple Store is designed to really LET you try out the operating system if you're uncertain: it's all in keeping with Apple's policy of being easy for the customer. Apple's consistent.

As a writer, there are a slew of tools designed specifically to make writing as easy as possible. I don't use any of them: I stick to TextEdit and Pages. I like writing, not planning out writing. When I have a bigger plan, I use actual paper. Even for me, though, using the default text editor, Apple's got an edge for me. Command-Control-D over any word on any application opens up the dictionary for that word in-line. If I right click and actually look it up by OPENING the application, I get instant Wikipedia, which is nice for quick research. There's also the system-wide spell-check, for when I like getting anal in iChat. (Good lord, that sounds wrong.) Or how, when I'm writing, I can hit escape partway through a word and get a list of every word that might match. Little conveniences that mean when I'm in the mood to write, I can actually WRITE.

And Apple goes halfway for me: the little gray button that nobody seems to talk about on the upper right, the one that removes the bulk space from most programs, that's wonderful for me. It gets rid of distractions. Or the drawer aesthetic for windows: I don't know if Windows has a variant on this, but the thing that opens up on any side of a window to hold information. I love that. It's such a great distinguisher. Things go both ways, too: on TextEdit, which is the Mac version of Notepad, I can format my fonts, lay out my page, and even edit images, because those are all built in to the core of the system. I prefer Pages because it's more designed for that stuff, but if I NEED it, it's there for me.

As a coder, I get a MUCH bigger assist from software, because of Coda. I'm not a very learned coder. I have a head filled with big ideas, but I don't know how to implement them. A program like Coda goes above and beyond in helping me get my ideas down. When I use it, I get the feeling I did when I first started writing: the thrill of having a blank slate and the tools I need to create something. And I've used Dreamweaver before, I've tested out other ones. They all feel wrong to me. Too bulky, too ugly. Every time I run into a problem coding, Coda seems to be right there to help me over that obstacle. And that's third-party software, too. I've found that most third-party solutions I've found on the Mac are excellent. My newsreader, my e-book creator, my DVD ripper. My Facebook sync tools with iPhoto and Address Book. Developers share the same mind for aesthetic that I do: that feeling of complete ease. And I've found that when I happen across a web site with the same feel, be it blog or 2.0 service, the ones that I gravitate towards are the ones that were made by Mac users. (I originally got hooked on a Mac when I found DaringFireball, started reading it for the quality of the writing and for the layout of the site, and... you know.)

So that's my humble little piece of advice. I don't know you, so feel free not to add me to your list of people recommending things. But my area of expertise per se deals with explaining things that other people aren't so good at explaining, and hopefully I've explained what it is about the Mac that draws people to it. It's the little things. It's things that make you feel good. And hey, I'll be honest, it's because every time Steve Jobs says "Wow," he sounds like a little kid playing with a golly-gee new toy, and because maybe that's not such a bad thing after all.