i agree to a point (and yours is a pretty good point).
i think it's part hardware. apple seems to do a pretty good job of building a working unit, and fixing an issue if they missed something (as with the early macbooks' discoloration and battery issues).
as an anecdotal aside, my 17" HP zd8000 model destroyed it's own video card by overheating shortly before i bought my macbook (in october i believe).
the zd7000 series had an overheating issue, and the zd8000 was supposed to fix this. but it didn't seem to. let me draw you a little mental picture of this thing too...
it is a desktop replacement. it is
HEAVY. it has a full leyboard with numberpad. it runs a very fast PentiumIV processor (i think it was 2.5 Ghz). it ran lots of games with no problem whatsoever. though it sounded like a jetplane while doing so. why? because it has not one, not two, but three
large fans underneath. half of it's circumfrence was covered in vents. it was also lifted very high by it's tall feet (about 1/2" by eyeballing it).
you'd think that would keep it pretty cool, but no. it melted the video card which is inseperable from the motherboard. HP, from what i've heard secondhand on forums, has said this model was not meant to play video games... feh!
so now, it's a paperweight. sitting in a spare room - HD removed and being used in a little aluminum case for my new macbook - waiting to be parted out. or for me to figure out how i could maybe use the 17" lcd for some other project. would be pretty cool if i could figure a way to mount a new slimline ps2 inside it and use the lcd and speakers...
but i digress.
it's not always just a software/os choice.
hardware can be a factor. get burned by windows machines enough, and you may think mac as well.
or it may be an os choice in a different manner. i thought it would be neat to learn a different os. it wasn't that i couldn't handle windows (i still have to at work, i do wintel server support and use, ironically enough, an HP laptop as my personal workstation.
the learning experience has been fun though, and i wouldn't trade my macbook for anything (except maybe a pro
)