I don't understand why people purchase Mac OS X based computers then want to run GNU coreutils on top of it
Because only Apple has figured out how to make and sell great laptops running Unix at a (relatively) reasonable price and where all the hardware and drivers just works out of the box. If I could have bought a computer as good as the macbook Air in every way, but with Linux instead of OS X and guarenteed zero driver or hardware comparability issues I would have. But I couldn't so I bought a Mac.
My wifi is still broken after the Lion upgrade. I tried everything and no one has been able to figure it out, including Apple's support. The only thing that works is replacing the Atheros driver with the Snow Leopard one. So much for drivers just working.
I wish users could understand they are not the center of the universe, and "one machine I got didn't work for me" doesn't automatically translate to "those brand of machines are bad". Bugs, problems, bad runs, happen with everything. One personal case (or 10,000 or 50,000) out of some 30,000,000 computers, is NOT the determining factor in respect to whether a brand of hardware works reliably or not.
"Just works" is relative. Given that Apple controls both the Wifi card and the driver for their machines, and that it offers a limited range of such cards, it sure is better poised to "just work" than some obscure wifi card used in a PC alongside with some third-party open source driver for it. This is, pretty much, common sense.
So, as relativity goes, it's pretty much true, or Apple wouldn't hold the higher user satisfaction position of multiple years in a row, with over 20% distance from the second runner.
If I'm paying double what I would pay for other brands, I expect to have driver issues fixed in short order. It's been 7 months now and a lot of other people have the same problem. It's an undisputed bug. What on earth does that have to do with any relativity or user satisfaction statistics?
I wasn't making any statistical claims whatsoever. I replied to someone talking about "zero driver or hardware comparability issues".
If I'm paying double what I would pay for other brands
For starters, you are not. You are just buying the equivalent of top-tier machines from other brands. If you compare the equivalents hw specs AND build quality (from the external design to the materials like aluminum used, to the extra cost for an unibody construction, to the extra engineering effort and cost to pack things lightly and thin, to the thunderbolt ports, to the display quality etc), you either end up same price, or cheaper or the thing doesn't exist at all in the PC side. Even worse with iPads and iPhones, which have competitors struggling to compete on price.
I expect to have driver issues fixed in short order
Well, I guess you can go to an Applestore and have the machine changed if it doesn't work, or get your money back.
But in general "X issue fixed in short order" is not how it works, even when buying mainframes for top dollar. Sometimes you just have to wait until the engineers find the root of the problem and come up with a solution. Sometimes it even takes the next generation of machines for the problem to be fixed, if it's a HW bug. Sometimes it never does, if it affects some small percentage of machines with some strange setup (e.g with that brand of router, when set to those settings, etc).
I replied to someone talking about "zero driver or hardware comparability issues".
If anyone claims "zero driver or hardware comparability issues, he is clearly delusional or just speaks for himself. iBooks circa 2003 even had their logic boards fail multiple times, for example. Or G5's had strange goo coming out from their cooling system. I had a failed DVD on a Macbook Pro. Still, the same kind of things happen to PC runs all the time (I've had too many such cases from '91 to '05), they are just so fragmented as a platform that you never get to hear from them.
A Macbook run is 10 million machines of the same* specs. How much is an Asus 105-SH/i-mkII run? Or a Dell run, considering it offers 2,000 build to order configuration combinations? 1% of a Macbook run in hundreds of thousands of people, 1% of those runs is like nothing, so you don't get to hear much. Not to mention that they don't have forums and sites dedicated to the machines, anyway, just broad websites for all PCs.
Your way of comparing hardware is not very useful for me. It just shows your own personal preferences, and I don't share your preferences. For me, "unibody construction" adds about as much value as a gilded keyboard would.
So when I said "I'm paying double what I would pay for other brands" I meant it literally, including the "I". The set of machines that meet my requirements includes machines from the likes of Toshiba that cost less than half of Apple's cheapest offering.
The reason why I still bought from Apple is that I need a Unix system and I hate dealing with driver issues. So having to deal with unfixed driver issues is the quickest way to drive me away.
How does the Lenovo x-series compare for you, where does it not measure up? I was recently at a linux conference and probably about 60-70% of delegates had either an Apple or a Lenovo laptop.
I've used IBM and Lenovo x-series (x41 and x60) laptops before and while I'm generally a fan and would definitely go with them as my number two choice, I've never had one "Just Work" with Linux. It's always very close, but there is always something. The x-220 was also more expensive for equivalent specs when I bough my Air, especially if you took into account the cost of replacing whatever drive it came with with a 120GB SSD. Also it is slightly larger and slightly heavier than the air, and for me size and weight where a big factor.
Then there are minor things like that there are no stores anywhere around here that sells them, meaning I'd have to buy one without playing with it first. Also it's basically impossible to buy one without a Swedish keyboard layout in Sweden, while Apple will happily let me choose any keyboard layout I want. None of these are deal-breakers in them selves but they're things that kind of add up.
Because only Apple has figured out how to make and sell great laptops running Unix at a (relatively) reasonable price and where all the hardware and drivers just works out of the box. If I could have bought a computer as good as the macbook Air in every way, but with Linux instead of OS X and guarenteed zero driver or hardware comparability issues I would have. But I couldn't so I bought a Mac.