We have had the beach ball of death come up three ties in the 4 month that we have owned our Mac and each time we have had to literally UNPLUG the sucker to get it to run again. Once we had to call Mac Tech Services because the whole thing crashed and would start up.
On a PC if you have a problem, which is rare unless you have a faulty piece of third party software, you just hit Control/Alt/Delete and everything gets fixed.
Refresh my memory. Are you the poster who has one Mac and a few pcs?
On my MacBook Pro, the control/apple/power reboots. Only have had to use it once, and in that case, it was my fault.
Sorry, missed this. You're kidding, right? Can any other PC user here back up this claim??
In seven years of owning and using OSX Macs, and the same amount of time administering several networks of OSX Macs, I have never had to "unplug" a Mac to get it to restart. Worst case scenario... with a kernal panic... hold in the power button for 10 seconds.
If it is application that has crashed, press CMD-OPT-ESC and force it to quit. Restart the App.
You description tends to make me think you really don't own an OSX Mac.