you mean an Apple Macintosh? MAC is a brand of make-up...
I'd own one:
The new OS is based on UNIX, and it's fantastic
Things you could have formerly criticised (being a PC lover) like no-right-mouse-button has changed
The GUI is well thought out and a pleasure to use, and it's very appealing in a professional way.. In the polar opposite that blue-and-green windows XP is very unpleasant to use in a disney way
The new macs have intel core duo chips in them, so they can be formatted and have windows installed on them if you insist
They are far more striking in design, ergonomics and better manufactured than most PCs/laptops
They (macbooks) cost only a little more than an equivalently specced Dell or IBM laptop
It begs the question.. what is a Mac anyway? Its converging to the point where you dont say "i want a PC" or "i want a mac".. you just say "i want a computer that runs microsoft office and satisfies my aesthetic needs"
And if a laptop you see in the mac store suits you to do thet, then buy it - the apple on the lid doesnt put you in a separate technical camp any more than a Vaio logo would (but there is a snobbery value, i must admit)
Praise the iPod.. thats where the cash came from to revive apple's other business interests.
I dont own a Mac, but I would if they sorted a docking station solution out - regardless of whether it has a star trek like magnetic power plug, I cant be bothered unplugging 17 wires just to take my unit home at night.. Hence the reason why I bought an IBM thinkpad. Possibly the ugliest laptop in the business, but the hardware is great, well supported, a huge range of professional options and it was cheap for the spec. Use whatever tools necessary to earn the money to do whatever it is you call fun!
On the Mono project notion, it harks back to a comment I made about .NET a long time ago.. Namely that .NET was java with the appeal pyramid reversed (java is one syntax, many platforms => wide appeal, .net is many syntaxes, one platform -> wide appeal). I Noted that if a .NET fw were developed for another system, then a .NET app should run in the same way a java one does. Its a long uphill because i dont doubt that .NET leans on windows specifics quite extensively, but it's interesting to hear it is being done and thankls for the pointer, neal!
In some ways it's moot in the context of Macs (because as noted, Macs and PCs are the same thing now, except Macs run a curvy gorgeous unix windowing environment) though I can understand the urge for spreading .NET to other platforms (MS already did it in terms of small devices) so that way we can have a washing machine that runs on .NET
The interesting thing is that, since macos is technically unix, it might be quite easy for the MONO team to bring .NET to linux, sunos, bsd, at similar times
