Well, look, it seems you're just really set against Apple products. That may not be the case, but you come across as having a vendetta. I don't think you're trolling, however. My point isn't that Apple is the best bang for your buck, far from it. But they offer a few things which no other manufacturer does (glass track pad, unibody construction, Cocoa interface, etc) these may seem trivial to you, but in the free market if people are willing to pay for them then Apple is smart to charge for it. Apple computers aren't about individual components, for some like myself it is the combination of all those little things together. When I can get that experience (hassel free) from another vendor, I'll jump over in a heartbeat.
There's also another issue to consider, many people are not as computer savvy as your typical Slashdot visitor. (I mean, we write our comments in HTML for crying out loud). Seeing as you're a fellow Linux user I'm sure you'd agree that there is no contest between OSX and Windows. And for the average user, Linux is not easy to configure in a way to get optimal performance. And even for me, sure, I could compile my own kernel for my own hardware, but I don't want to have to. I want to have fun with those sort of things for side projects, but also have at least one machine that just works and does everything I need out of the Box.
I think you'd have people be a little more open to hearing your data if you came across less like you've got a score to settle with Apple. People tend to be more open to hearing opinions from people that don't sound biased. I think that's why so many people up until now have been dismissive of your own experience.
And no, Automatic reference counting is not Garbage Collection, its much more efficient than that. In fact Objective-C does have garbage collection as well. ARC is not yet part of the Objective-C standard, but soon will be I'm sure. It is available on Linux but only since last year.
