Good article. I have a couple of thoughts to toss in...
First, I have to agree with boi - proofread the article, and try to divorce yourself from the MacOS-centric view for the sake of the article. A particular bit jumped out at me:
But, what do Windows and Linux do well?
Well, windows doesn't really do anything well, per se, so, aside from it being universal, it just can't be said to make sense. Windows makes sense if you've used Windows.
Otherwise, you are screwed.
I understand, this is an opinion piece, so a statement like that is not completely out of line, but I do think that outside the Mac community, it suggests an undue bias against Windows. Honestly, I know at least a few people who would have written this off as an anti-Windows rant (although I know it's not) based on that quotation alone.
Second, bravo on working the Unix connection. Although you didn't quite come out and say it, you did kind of brush up against one of my observations about the role of MacOSX in the greater world. Examining all of the mainstream (and not so mainstream) OSen, there is a polarity that has been strengthened by Apple's adoption of Unix as MacOSX's underbelly. That is, BSD, AIX, Solaris, QNX, Linux, MacOSX, BeOS, all use some form of Unix as their core. Windows, on the other hand, well..... doesn't. So, the polarity is Unix and Windows (and I know there are exceptions, but not in enough numbers to matter for this argument to collapse). Although Windows (NT,2k,XP) have a sort-of Posix layer in there somewhere, it's not important enough to Microsoft to matter. They're far more interested in owning the hearts and minds of their users than being technically compliant with anything else.
And, like you, I'm very happy that Apple has decided to go with a Unix core, rather than continue to go it alone. It really does make MacOSX much more useful to me. The ability to grab any number of projects built for *BSD or Linux and with little or no modification get many of them running on my Mac... *sigh* I love it!!
