Someone said Macs are based on Unix?! I'm too lazy to look up the actual quote, but I don't think so...
Macs are based on being people friendly - Unix is not people friendly, it is admin/computer engineer/programmer friendly. Macs with one mouse button(usually), and the centrally located configuration, and zerox park 'rip off' gui simplify things for end users making them 'friendly.' ANd make them require TWICE the RAM a PC would...damn resource hogs!
[this, of course, is all IMHO and in the spirit of a small bit of MACbashing]
I'd like MACs a lot more if Apple let others make them, and then went through the 'clone wars' the PCs did, but I do like them - I worked at several companies where graphics artists swore by them, especially at Corbis. They used a weird color suction cup attachment for the macs to calibrate their color which was pretty weird - but the color capablilty and the graphics software, MAC Monitors and various fancy smancy 'ergo' input devices really made the MACS stand out...for hippie types who take reputation of hardware and software over actual hands on use of other operating systems and hardware. Mostly I think the greeners couldn't handle more than one button on a mouse.
I swear that there were granola crumbs in the MAC keyboards, burkenstocks on the floor and attitude toward anything other than a $5000.00 min MAC being used. RAM was the most ordered upgrade. It is much, much cheaper to updgrade 300 outdated company PCs than to upgrade/replace 300 outdated company MACs.
For trade show kiosks, I'd have to say PCs are better. Mostly because of moving the bulky hardware around, and replacing stuff. Mr. Gates bought several small digital stock companies for Corbis that mostly had MAC products - and we didn't tell them to get rid of them... Awww...such a nice company!
MACs are cool, but I would not go exclusively with only a MAC at home. I could and do get away with having a PC exclusively at home, or two or three - and if I had the bucks I'd get a MAC too.
In HS we had 2 Macintosh Plus', like 30 Apple ]['s(e,+,c etc) and ONE PC Junior...lol. Times sure have changed.
Oh yah, Stability...umm.. I think MACs could be a bit more stable than PCs...mostly because of the number of files on a Typcial PC is probably more - more files, more chance of instability. The MAC that sits in the corner of the office, that gets used less - has less random software/scripts/files etc installed by users in general..IMHO will be more stable than the PC that has everything from some guy's weird downloaded screen saver, pop-up explorer java ads, huge numbers of files in many cache directories that never get cleaned out effectively, and the 'tweaking' done by 'professionals' (users with enough knowledge to break stuff and blame MS).