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I don't like when most people make an argument for/against Mac OS X/Linux against the other OS when they are basing themselves solely on the question of the GUI (is it like Windows?) or just on the kernel (does it run elsewhere than on Apple hardware). Problem is that neither place is where you have the biggest payoff.
If you look at Mac OS X and forget the pretty/annoying GUI, depending on your opinion, you might start to notice a few things:
- So-called "10 000$" worth of professional fonts, with an ultra-modern ligature engine, that is available across all applications, full UTF-8 support evverywher, even in the Terminal (ever tried deleting a file written in Chinese characters? I almost got a hard-on doing that)
- ColorSync: a professional-grade color system that allows you to keep your colors consistent between your input, display and output devices.
- CoreAudion: an extremely low-latency sound subsystem, with guaranteed access times
- Frameworks: the final solution to dll hell: a versioned and sound architecture for maintaining different versions of a given library. Couple that with dynamic shared object discovery, and you can say goodbye to LD_PATH and other horrors.
- The fastest JRE on personal computing plateforms.
etc. etc. Now that is really what you get when you buy OS X. That is (part of) what will help you publish a national magazine, produce a feature film, or mix an album. Yes the kernel is very important, yes the GUI will help you, but it's those layers between the two that give to Mac OS X its biggest advantages. You do get professional quality components with OS X, and that is why people use it.
Linux has a different set of advantages: you need to create an embedded OS for a new project? You want to have low-cost, high-throughput clusters? You just need a web/mail/something server now? You want to use your older hardware? You want to keep a consistent plateform into a highly mixed hardware environment? You want something that's customizable to death? You want to write a new graphics subsystem and you need a plateform to develop/test it? You want to save the world? Want to maintain some hugely fat database for little trouble? Damn it, Linux is, and will always be your friend.
People should start to realise that Linux does not have the professional components of Mac OS X, and that those componenents are the reason why some people will never use anything else, because those components are not available elsewhere in a single package, and that well integrated. Putting Linux on a Mac is not a heresy if you don't need those components, and don't need them so much that even buying an updated copy of OS X would be ludicrous in such case.
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