opinion
Touching on a few points:
- Poor UI design is a matter of opinion - just like when two people can look at a piece of art and one person hates it and the other likes it.
- Registy, dll, "legacy bloat": uh what does the average word, photoshop, excel, browser, (pick an app) user care about that stuff and how does it affect them exactly?
Given the sheer volume of shareware apps on the market (and i'm not judging anyone's development background or abilities

), I think it'd be safe to argue that some applications are just not built to the same standards as others.
- Hard to shutdown?? Press the power button one time! Vista and XP can both be configured to shut off the PC or hibernate the PC with one press. As for the UI. Go to start menu and press the power icon in vista. Is that any different than going to the apple menu and selecting shutdown??? I count two clicks for both.
- Auto Reboot?? Anyone using a DVR knows that reboots are deadly to recording that episode of Prison Break. My PC is never turned off and it has yet to reboot on it's own. You need to check your configuration settings. You can set the automatic updates to not install, not reboot, or whatever. If you're too lazy to set that up, then don't complain that the computer is doing what it's configured to do. And the fact that the default setting is the issue - seriously?? If you ask 10 people what they thought, 5 would say to go one way and 5 would say go the other. Get over it.
- Incompatibility with hardware; Granted Vista did require some hardware upgrades and even incompatibilities with older devices of a certain nature but XP works fine with older products. But while you're trying to hook your laserjet2 up to Vista, you might want to rethink that brick of a printer and get something a little more efficient, quiet, and faster.
- Hardcore multimedia capabilities: Yes the mac can act as a dvr. True. How many people are able to use their mac as a full-time dvr, video input device, personal computer, dvd "ahem-backup" machine, and gaming device all at the same time? I've had a dual core 3Ghz machine recording to the hard drive, "backing up" a dvd that i own, streaming a TiVo signal into a window, and running Powerpoint all at the same time and I've been doing this for 2 years since Vista ultimate came out. Not 1 hiccup - I don't do shareware typically.
- Nag you with stupid baloon tip messages: Uh I've had my macbook pro for about a week now and I've been asked about 15 to 20 times for my stupid password just to install an application? That's different how exactly?
- Prone to viruses or browser exploits: Seriously? If the shoe were on the other foot and Mac systems had market share, I don't think anyone would argue that you'd have those same people directing their efforts toward loopholes in the mac os and exploiting them. It's human nature to want to rock the system and right now the "system" is Windows/Microsoft.
- Not create a UI to disable/remove a laptop's IR sensor: Is this really a deal breaker?? Seriously? Haven't owned many laptops but I know that almost every business laptop I've been given at work didn't even have an IR port. So can we get some perspective?!
All that being said, I have seen many-a-mac users (I'm one now too) go around bashing windows because of what others have heard or believe and even maybe based on an isolated incident (such as Mr. Reboot By Itself) but it boils down to applications and usability. I've got Office installed on my OSX side and on the Bootcamp Vista side. I don't see a difference. Firefox is the same, Chrome is the same, and Safari is the same too. So which is better?
Neither in my opinion. They both do what they need to do. But I'm definitely sticking with my Vista box for all my multimedia stuff.