>something that works, every day.

>the experience of running OS X on Apple hardware is simply unmatched.

Eh. Seems a lot of people on HN believe this, but it's not always the case. Just a quick visit to discussion.apple.com will show all sorts of issues people have with the OS including bugs like http://www.cnet.com/news/some-lion-users-plagued-by-black-sc... which is a bug in the OS.

Edit: just some things I noticed in the short time I used OS X: The gmail integration is buggy. I didn't get messages on time, and I have to either quit the app or take Mail offline and then online again before new mail will start streaming in. Sometime I couldn't get it to quit.

The 'quicklook' thing seemed really slow, which seemed to be a problem a lot of users had.

Multi-monitor support isn't that great. I had multiple windows on multiple desktops for some reason and it just felt weird.

I had issues with audio stopping and not working again until I did a reboot.

In some apps scrolling was really rough.

Window management in OSX is easily my biggest complaint. Installing Spectacle (open source) at least gave me back the Windows shortcuts for half screen, full-screen, and next monitor. The full screen width menu system drives me nuts, as with a 27" monitor I have to go 3ft to the left to find whatever non-keystroked command I need. It feels at least 15 years behind to me, especially given their fondness for those big cinema displays.

Apple seems to think I should unitask on a single monitor. That's not how I work, so it's not for me.

I'm a long time Linux desktop user, since the days of Debian Slink and Windowmaker, but I dig OS X. It's slick. I wish there was a desktop on Linux that could strike that balance between features, usability and stability. That being said, I'm also cheap. If Mac's were more competitively priced, I would probably own one, but paying that much over market value for what essentially is a "pretty" PC that can run OS X has always been an issue for me. I just chug along on my aging but sturdy Thinkpad with Linux. I think Apple could change the game if they decoupled OS X from the hardware. Who would pay for Window 8 when you could just install OS X instead?

Who would buy a Mac when you could just install OS X on a PC? (Note: I don't necessarily subscribe to this viewpoint, but I think Apple do, and have historically. And I speak as someone who was cheap enough to buy a Mac Mini and bring my own monitor - the only way I could justifiably afford OS X)

That's the thing, Apple fans will just keep buying Apple no matter what. Even if you could by a PC with OS X there would always be a demand for Apple hardware. If Apple sold OS X separately from Macs people would still buy Macs.

Legally, you still would have to, yes.

This is probably just me, but the biggest reason I use Linux is the package manager and repositories (Arch's package manager and wiki are amazing). Anything other than that, Windows or OS X, feels like it's missing something and I have to work around it.

People are saying they have to spend a lot of time configuring Linux but in my experience that's not the case (obviously once it's installed in the case of Arch, which for me is a worthwhile investment).

I do admire the polish of OS X's desktop though.

OS X has everything an end-user needs already (iLife apps are best of breed on any platform and come for free !), that's the beauty. For the rest there's the seamless App Store.

Now for hackers, you already get a long way with the built-in BSD commands, but one word : http://brew.sh

Brew leads to the same kind of experience as MinGW on Windows. It's just not as good as the package managers on Linux.

When I don't want to tinker with my Debian anymore, I just stop doing it and things work the way I left them. That's the main beauty of good Linux distros that keeps me so attached to them - I always can play with stuff, but I don't have to. And when I want to, it's much better choice than OS X for that.