Well, obviously this is a matter of taste, and by definition subjective, so I'm not saying you're wrong and I'm right, but...
...I'm speechless at our level of disagreement. This truly surprises me, to the point I've always assumed everyone acknowledged McDonald's food was trash, it's just that it's sometimes so damn convenient. To me, McDonald's burgers taste like cardboard. They definitely don't taste like meat. A guy I know who admits he likes McDonald's burgers says it's precisely because they don't taste like meat (in his words: "I don't like ground beef, which is why I like McDonald's: their burgers don't taste like beef.")
In my experience, almost any randomly chosen non-franchise burger place will make a superior burger (I mean, the ones using actual ground beef, and not frozen patties like McDonald's). From that basic standard, you can only go up. The ground meat is immediately superior, it doesn't look like that pre-frozen brown-grey stuff McDonald's uses. The dressings of good burger joints (sorry, I don't know the proper word in English.. toppings? dressings? you get the idea) are almost universally superior to McDonald's. You get a vast variety of sauces to go with your burger, whereas McDonald's only has a couple, and they are disgusting, something straight out of a cheap bottle.
As for fries, I also disagree. McDonald's uses, at least in the countries I know, pre-frozen fries of brands such as McCain's (if this particular brand doesn't exist in your country, I'm sure you'll get the idea anyway), instead of actual, freshly made french fries. I understand why: their logistics don't allow them to make proper fries. But almost by definition they are inferior. Again, not comparing them to other fast food burger chains -- which in my opinion fare similarly to McDonald's -- but with what I can make at home or what gets made in small, non-chain burger joints.