I spent a number of years as director of IT at a newspaper. We used Windows machines on the business side of the house, Macs for graphics in the newsroom and ad make-up areas, and Sun (UNIX) workstations for the Raster Image Processing required to drive our output devices.
By far the most stable were the Sun workstations. They had to be since daily production was totally dependent upon them. Managing the Windows machines was an organizational nightmare since enough users had enough knowledge to be dangerous and insisted on loading non-sanctioned software, downloading from the internet, and opening any email that came their way. Every new release of Windows was a nightmare since we were compelled to update to maintain compatibility across the organization. The Macs were no prize either. It seemed the solution to every problem was to reload MAC OS.
Then came OS X. Finally and operating system with the underlying stability of UNIX.
Naturally, my home systems were always Windows machines since most of my "homework" centered around the business side of the house -- budgets, spreadsheets, Word documents, etc.
After leaving the newspaper business - and IT management as well - I could pick the platform for personal use that I wanted. It was a 2008 iMac Core 2 Duo that I just sold to a friend to make room for my new 2012 27". There's been no looking back. We now have an entire Apple ecosystem running -- my iMac, a pair of MacBook Airs, a pair of iPhones, two first gen iPads, and iPad mini, and an Airport Extreme. The total integration is remarkable and refreshing. The stuff just works! Not to say there aren't a few glitches here and there - I've been having a problem with Safari crashes on my iMac of late.
But gone are the Windows frustrations: the need to upgrade machines with each new release (my 2008 iMac started at Leopard and now runs Mountain Lion smoothly), DLL hell, registry corruption, performance degradation over time (due to some of the above) and inordinate numbers of system crashes.
I read some of the whining and moaning on these threads and chuckle. I started my career on IBM PC/XTs with 640k of memory and a 10 mb hard disk, DOS 2.0 (eventually Windows 3.1, but that come later along with more powerful hardware). My first PC/XT cost almost $5000 with an Epson dot matrix printer.