As a 20-year Macintosh user going back to when the machines didn't even have hard drives, I confess to being a big fan of Apple and the Mac OS. I also confess to being a nearly-insufferable Mac evangelist (some would say "delete 'nearly'") until about seven years ago, when, as a result of Windows 98, the differences between Windows and the Mac as a platform for the average user became so small that they didn't matter. Those differences remain small, despite the exceptionally cool advances in the Mac OS through Jaguar, Panther, and Tiger. (snip) Also cooling my ardor for...