Apple make a quality product. If you were to have Apple make parts like the PC environment. You would nothing but another cheap PC. It would make hardware support more difficult, just like it is in the PC environment (you know the plug and pray situation). As MacAddikt put it Apple is in the business of selling computers, not applications. I believe the reason why Apple creates an operating system for their hardware, is to be sure they have a quality product. I don't know about you, but I have worked with various favors of operating systems. Nothing seems to work better than the OS that is built for the hardware (i.e. sgi - IRIX, IBM - AIX, sun - solaris, etc.).
Also I don't believe that Apple's Mac OS X is aqua setting on top of a linux kernal.
All in all, I buy Apple product because I get more value for my money. I currently have Apple hardware that is more than 10 years old, and is still working fine as the day I bought it. None of the PC I have had are still working. I wonder why?
