As a young rocket scientist, the Mac was easiest to use - but useless.
The PC was infinately faster, running my programs, but took some bashing to make it work.
The unix box was a friggin miracle, from a computational standpoint - but you have to have a dedicated unix-driver to own it.
And after all that, I miss my main-frame.
Very true.
And today each platform is trying to improve the areas it is perceived weakest. *nix is trying to become more mainstream via MAC and Linux--MAC trying to become more useful and Linux trying to become more user friendly. PC/Windows has been moving more into the higher end systems.
Kind of like how the democRATS and Republicans of yester-year actually had polar opposite views of the positions they hold today. Will Windows become the high-end system and Linux the everyday desktop in 10 years as they each try to take over each other's market share?
The PC was infinately faster, running my programs, but took some bashing to make it work.
The unix box was a friggin miracle, from a computational standpoint - but you have to have a dedicated unix-driver to own it.
Well, OSX puts the Mac GUI on top of a Unix kernel and has X Windows So it tends to address your first and last concern by merging the two. It's easy to use with the power of Unix behind it. The current problem with Windows isn't speed or ease-of-use (XP and .Net make it mighty easy to use) but security.
And after all that, I miss my main-frame.
They still have their place. The problem is that so few people are taught batch programming techniques these days. Batch processing is still the best way to handle certain types of data if you don't need interactive access to it.
I find Macs incredibly annoying for lacking a taskbar. It takes forever to get to an open window if you have more than 3 programs running at the same time.
I love a PC for that alone.