might we see a dock for an iDevice that has a telephone handset?

Why would you need that, when you can easily use so many bluetooth or microphones built into headphones?

I've used the iPad for a lot of Skype calls, a good set of earbuds with a microphone worked great.

* Applecare means EVERYTHING is fixed for you, hassle free. If it can't be fixed on the spot you'll either get a brand new replacement or the computer will be out a week or so for repairs. They do not haggle with you or give you grief about HOW broken something is, they err on the side of YOU being happy.

* All of the trackpads on any model of Mac you choose are fantastic, and work extremely well. You really can easily work without a mouse.

* The unibody design is really solid, and helps prevent damage in backpacks.

* The magsafe connectors work really, really well to prevent a laptop from being yanked off a table or desk.

* Time Machine really works for normal people. Just hook it up to an airport (or get a time capsule) and she'll never have to think about backups, nor will you...

* Apple Store support. You can go in and ask the Genius Bar for help with anything, not just hardware issues. The only time anything is not free is when there is hardware that needs replacing out of warranty (and even then Apple is sometimes liberal).

I love my family so much I made sure as many of them as possible got Macs - so that when I was with them I could spend time with them, not their computers.

I know this all sounds horribly like an add but it's just real life experiences about the best aspects of my non-technical family members and myself owning Macs in comparison with help I used to have to give PC user family members often.

The only area where Macs still have significant complexity is around directly connecting and setting up printers. That part has always been annoying and not very pleasant. To alleviate that get a printer that you can connect to over a network, one that supports the iPad wireless connection standard is best. They are simply to set up and as painless to configure as a printer possibly can be on a Mac, and the printer not having to be connected to a computer is a huge drop in complexity of troubleshooting for multi-device households.

Thinkpads are more modular, it's cheaper/easier to replace screens, keyboards, optical drives or batteries. Macs have OS X.

If you get the Mac with Applecare all of the things you list are replaced for free if anything fails or is even somewhat wrong.

The problem with the dongle is that you're then stuck at USB speeds, rather than gig speeds.

The ethernet adaptors on Apple thunderbolt displays are full gig speeds, since obviously Thunderbolt can handle the bandwidth...

If really needed, you could also go with a thunderbolt - express card adaptor and get a GigE Expresscard. But most non-technical users will be just fine with a 10/100 interface.

Apple puts together a very pretty package and basically dictates what you will run, how you will run it, what you can do with it, and where you can do it.

You can run anything you like on any Macbook. And as other responders have noted it DOES solve the "too many models" problem, there is a limited selection of base models. It's basically, do you want an air or not and how much memory (RAM and storage) with reasonable defaults so you cannot go wrong simply ordering default configurations.

You will still have software problems.

Here's the key thing. Yes, you will have software problems. But who will solve them? If you are helping a friend buy a PC it's YOU who are solving them, that's who.

If you help someone buy a Mac you can simply say "try the Apple store Genius Bar first". Chances are they can help, they generally are pretty competent and pretty technical.

You still have viruses.

Actually no. There's one virus, one, that was from a Java installation, and an OS update already closed the hole. And you would have had to go through a chain of trouble to activate it... not a virus at all in fact.

But even ignoring the technical definition the truth is that unlike a PC, generally you can let a non-technical user go for years with a Mac and be pretty sure they will not have a virus.

You still have software problems with upgrades.

Actually that is REALLY rare, and again - Apple Store, not you. I have not had upgrade problems in years with any Mac software updates.

People still need to search some forum from time-to-time to figure out how to fix some strange new issue.

Or have someone help them for free, at an Apple Store. Are you starting to get what makes a Mac such a great idea for non-technical users? How is a non-technical person supposed to search forums for "odd problems" anyway? They cannot.

Ever try and build something from Ports only to have it *not* friggin work when you upgrade?

Come on man, that's not something the original poster is going to find a problem. If you are compiling UNIX utilities yes you may have some hiccups, but even then you can usually just recompile!

Apple has gone to great lengths to make the use experienced top-notch, but it still has it's problems just like Windows

That is the biggest misconception. I still have to help people with modern (Windows 7) pc's from time to time. Macs do NOT have problems anywhere close to what non-technical windows users have every day.

To even think about buying a non-technical user a Windows box and all the inherent baggage that comes with it is simply cruel to my mind - and it's a cruelty that as I said will be punishing you as well as the recipient.

Or, to make the obligatory joke... Wait, watt?

Easy. 1000 hours. Wait, what?

I like to explain it in terms of humans. A watt is an instantaneous unit of power. It represents a resource that is available to do work at any given point of time. In much the same way, a company has employees. They are resources that are available to do work at any given point in time, and each employee can do roughly a fixed amount of work in a given period of time. If a company has ten employees working during the day, assuming an eight-hour work day, it gets eighty employee-hours of work done. If it needs to get more than that amount of work done, it must either increase the number of employees (the wattage available) or increase the period of time over which it does the work (longer hours).

Sadly, this explanation fails to account for folks who reply that they can also make the machine more efficient so that it does more work per watt—work smarter, not harder, and all that—at which point most people end up working longer hours and fudging the hours on their timecards. But I digress.

... it's not about finding a magic bullet, it's about helping cut back on (not eliminate) the need to use coal or nuclear power.

Only up to the point where all the daytime power needs are covered by solar. Given the slow ramp-up/ramp-down times for nuclear plants, they're pretty much suitable only for providing base load (24x7), so either you're using it all day and all night or you're not using it at all. In other words, solar power, if deployed broadly enough, could make nuclear power economically infeasible.

A long term solution to power needs to replace *all* form of non-renewable, CO2-generating energy...

Yes, agreed. And also better storage technology is needed, especially with intermittant renewables such as solar and wind.