I was in the same boat. Switched from mixed windows/linux desktops to Macs around 2007 or so. Switched back to Linux a couple years ago, though, and honestly it's as much an out of the box experience as OSX ever has been. Mint in particular is stellar out of the box.

You do have to be somewhat careful of the hardware you buy, but arguing that having to buy exclusively Apple hardware is somehow better than exclusively buying, say, IBM hardware to maintain compatibility with your OS is pure sophistry.