This is a great question, and not to mention a debate that has been going on for quite some time. Which is the superior operating system? Generally speaking, this is a preference based on what you use a computer for. Imaging, design, video production & applications geared toward the marketing industry have generally favored Mac OS X. While almost all other businesses prefer Windows (PC) based operating systems. Personal computing has been dominated by the Windows OS for years, but we may see a change coming.
So what benefits would OS X offer? Well a lot actually. Apple has made significant changes over the years with their OS and hardware. To begin OS X is based off of a BSD variation once called OPENSTEP by NeXT OS that was actually a startup by Mr. Jobs back in 1985. Since its inception, OS X has been able to power the tools and software developed by the ever increasing Open Source movement.
Also included with the BSD core comes some of the oldest UNIX like variations tools sets, that have history spanning all the back to the famous Bell Labs days in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. More recently though since the IPod has been a hit, software developers are seeing more and more OS X users, thus leaving more & more application to be developed and ported to OS X.
But this is where the real debate comes to place what applications do you need? Some are only written for Windows, while others are only written for Apple or Linux/Unix variations. Apple offers Bootcamp to accommodate those who need to run an old Tax Program that will only work on Windows. Bootcamp will allow dual OS’s to be loaded on a single machine, meaning one computer with both OS X & Windows. If you don’t want to boot down and load Windows, there are other alternatives like the Open Source Wine (Windows Emulation) project.
Intel Chip? That’s right; Apple no longer uses Motorola chips in their systems. So what does that mean? More of the software developed by the Open Source movement and others is compatible without porting. Leaving hundreds of thousands of applications to run, install and or build on the vanilla version of OS X.
Lastly, Apple has done a good job of relaying a higher quality of software (this is still very debatable, considering their latest version of Safari on Windows XP didn’t go so smooth). There is no need for defragging, less viruses and a stable OS foundation (BSD Unix) proven over decades. But nonetheless, they are known for easier to understand, Works out of the box and higher quality of software.
Hopefully this helps.