Jack, Apple uses a different approach to customizing their products.
There are 6 models of laptops, 3 MacBook and 3 MacBookPro. The feature list is generally so rich to make endless variants not necessary. More than adding 1GB of ram to my MacBookPro I don't know what I should do. Bluetooth is included so I just bought a bluetooth mouse and it's great. The inclusion of 2 FireWire ports allow me to use about 1TB of external storage. It's a different concept. I stopped building PCs years ago, life's too short. I can build a PC and recompile Linux during breakfast, that's not what I want to do. Just because I can, it doesn't mean that I have to. I switched to the Mac exactly because I needed as system that is up and running in the shortest time possible. If I need an editing workstation on the run, I can just get a MacBookPro, out of the box, and I'm ready to go. Endless permutations based on every little video card manufacturer in Taiwan doesn't buy any more productivity. And at least I know that Apple has verified the working of their OS on every hardware configuration. That concept simply does't exist in the PC world. BTW, the new MacPro has a completely configurable architecture. You can add more HDs, AJA/BM cards, expansions, etc.

There are 3 major types of iPods: iPod, Nano and Shuffle. There are several sizes of storage available, depending on your needs and budget. You can play any MP3 file on them. You can use MP3, you can rip any CD, it's a completely open system. You don't want to buy from iTMS? Then don't, buy a CD and rip it.
Forgive Apple for providing the first, global, store for buying CHEAPLY, legal music and making it better every few months. Regarding FairPlay? You really think that the recording labels would have greenlighted music download without any form of protection? Not a chance in hell. It would not happen. In fact Windows DRM is even more restrictive. If anything, we should be grateful to Apple to apply such a lax systems and still provide music that you own and that you can use both on Macs and PCs! Nobody else has anything nearly as simple and open. Most competitors use a single-platform, proprietary encoding: windows media.

Linux has been available on the Mac for years! I hear that now Ubuntu can be installed on even old G3s, and Intel Linux is not a problem on the new Intel Macs. Not that this option adds anything to value of a Mac or a PC. I can't edit on Linux! But since your brought it up...Linux has been built with multiplatform abilities since... ever! It runs on a IBM 390 for crying out loud. Hardly a PC exclusive. I run my business on Linux, I use a linux machine at home as a Squid cache and print server. It's a wonderful OS that I promoted for years and still promote today. In fact one of the reasons why I switched to the Mac was that I was famiar with Linux and that made switching to a BSD-based system piece of cake. A few years ago PHP and MySQL didn't come bundled with Mac OS, Apache did, and so I was able to take several Linux packages and recompile them under Mac OS.

I hope this sheds a little bit of light on the difference between the two systems. As I mentioned before it's important to be familiar with both platforms before you can formulate conclusions. Since this is probably stretching the limit of acceptable "off topic" in this forum, I'll be glad to provide any more information about Mac and Mac OS and comparison between platforms, via private email.

Gotta go back to editing :)

Paolo,

Thank you for the explanations. Very helpful.