"Logic Audio is not identical to Cubase or anything else out there, which is why there is a substantial base of musicians who swear by it and the increased productivity they feel they get from it."

You mean like any other multi-track studio software, all of which are slightly different from one another and each has many thousands of dedicated users? Logic Audio is a pretty good piece of software, and it's benefited a bit since Apple bought Emagic but once again, it's not anything particularly special that I can't find for Windows or even Linux. If I used a Mac for multitrack recording, it would be near the top of my list. In other words, nothing to put myself out a few thousand dollars over.

And again with an unsubstantiated claim of productivity.

I had a car once, a 1982 Datsun. It was small, low to the ground, handled poorly and made a hell of a lot of noise, vibration and drama when you hit the gas. You felt like you were going like a bat out of hell. But it's 0-60 time was something like 14 seconds. I felt productive in it but in fact wasn't.

"It seems you're saying "it all just software" and so therefore you can just randomly swop out App 1 that offers feature X, with App 2 that offers feature X-bar. But the fact of the matter is, its still not the same, and the little details add up."

Correct. I agree, the little features add up. And yes, "its all just software", just 1's and 0's. Here pick from a list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_multitrack_record...

Logic Studio is nothing particularly special and yet you proffer that forward as to why somebody should "switch".

"Eg perhaps you can export PDFs out of Office, but can you do it out of your browser, or your IDE, or <arbitrary application>, does it work precisely the same way every time,"

Two parts:

Part 1: yes. I can create a PDF out of every single piece of software I have installed on my computer that has a print function. I've been able to do that for a great many years. I'm not even sure precisely when I acquired that capability it was so long ago (1995-6 maybe?).

"could you do it without thinking about it, and did you ever have to explicitly think about installing some extra software just to make it happen?"

2nd Part. So you've never had to install software on your Mac before? Everything you've ever wanted to do was pre-installed when you bought it? Wow, that's amazing, my Mac Book Pro couldn't do almost anything out of the box, it must be defective.

Pointing at a singular minor feature (PDF creation) that just happens to come with your OS is not "switch-worthy". If I asked you "could you RDP connect to Windows boxes without thinking about it, and did you ever have to explicitly think about installing some extra software just to make it happen?" You would scoff at that just like I'm scoffing at your PDF example. How about connections to Exchange servers? Did you have to install some software to make that happen or did you sit down in front of your 1-button keyboard (labeled "go") and it just did all you could ever want for you? It's not a knock against the system that it can't do those two major features out of the box, it's just that both OSs can't do some things that the other can do. Again, roughly equivalent. But one has a higher dollar figure attached to those equivalent features.

"And sure you can run VirtualBox Ubuntu just as well on Windows, but how easy is it for you to roll back your virtual machine's rootfs to the version it was at 1pm, 3 days ago? And did you have to explicitly think about how to set up your backups that way, or is it a benefit that just magically happened?"

I can also run a few other VMs, most for free. Better support for emulators, device connectivity, hardware, etc. etc. etc. most for $0 (except the hardware, har har).

Backups are handled by my enterprise for work (never had to install a thing or think about it), and by an online storage system for home (I did have to think about that a bit, the same as a Mac user would if they were to use a similar system).

I assume referring to roll-back, you are talking about Apple's backup system "Time Machine" or whatever they are calling it now. It's pretty cool, I have to admit. I have 2 TB data I have to deal with that change daily. Do I have to go out and buy a 6 TB drive so I can revert back 3 times if I need to? At any rate, that kind of reversion would not be beneficial to me or my workflow.

I'm confused, you seem to be trying to make the case that you don't have to be able to think to use a Mac, but I thought Macs were targeted to "smart" people?