Ubuntu vs Mac OS

So I recently bought an iMac, and I love it! I still have my dell laptop which has Ubuntu on it. Funny thing is that I recently switched over from OpenSuse to Ubuntu. IMO Ubuntu was easier to install from OpenSuse. Of course taking into account that I had installed OpenSuse on a purely Windoze box, all the fun stuff involving partitioning was already done for me. Anyway I did spend a few weeks with Ubuntu installing software and configuring my desktop so I do have some sort of an experience with it.

So If I have a laptop, why do I need another personal machine??
I have always wanted a machine with Mac OS on it. I used the Apples sparingly at Emory, but never truly got the hang of it. Ever since my husband got a mini, we sort of started replacing all our machines at home to either Apple TVs or Mac minis. I never really had the need for another machine since my Dell was good enough for all my side-project development machine. Or let me rephrase - I was happy with my laptop for the last 4 years. I do have a few issues with my Dell right now - I can't test out my web apps on Safari/IE/FF, Its not very fast (tops out at 2G RAM), I don't have a fancy text editor(tried to pimp up gedit to emulate textmate), and well I really wanted a change in my OS.

This last weekend was the tax free weekend. We stood in line at the apple store and were taken care of pretty quickly. After 20 minutes, I was the proud owner of an iMac **and** a free iPod touch! The iMac, designed by Apple in California, is a simply amazing design - the monitor has the entire computer inside it and its still not that thick. The speakers are not bad and I have enough USB ports on the back of the monitor - very sleek.

Once you get the hang of using an Apple machine with the funky Mighty Mouse, and learning your way around the Expose and the million keyboard shortcuts, its a pretty straight-forward OS to interract with. The only thing I might want to complain about is the lack of focus-follows-mouse support in the windows manager. Ever since my school days of playing around with Enlightment, I have been addicted to this very customized preference.

Anyway, other than that, here is a list of differences I see between Mac and Linux -

1. Ease of installation of software - On Linux, installing a software or application is not the most complicated process, but it takes time - the basic steps are downloading the binary or the tar ball, unzip it, make it, and then copy the files over to /the/proper/location. On an Apple, all you do is download the mac-os-version and copy it to Applications. Thats it - how easy is that.
2. The Dashboard - On Linux, you would probably need to start up all these applications in a different desktop - there is no dock like functionality. On an Apple, its always there at your beck and call . I like using it without the need to crank up the date app or the calendar app or the weather app.
3. Fluid - There is no way that I can explain how convenient SSBs are!! I have facebook, hahlo, jango, zimbra mail all opened up as its own little application. There are neat scripts that make the GUI look better and I don't have to bother about whether one app might cause a crash in another. So sure, I could open up different sessions of FF but it is not the same experience. Also, fluid is based on the Safari technology, its a lot faster.
4. TextMate - Eclipse is way too bloated to code. If I am not writing java code, Eclipse is more of a hassle to use than anything. Textmate is so easy to use, so many different templates and such a simple interface.
5. iTunes - I have tried to use amarok to sync my ipods. It hasn't been a complete disaster but its not intuitive. iTunes does it the best!
6. Prettier fonts/design/layout/shadows/GUI - Need I say more - its just prettier!
   

Hopefully I can code up the next-earth-shattering application on my new beautiful desktop, and then this purchase would be justified!