What I am really curious about are the motivations for using Macs by highly technical developers who are not otherwise into that kind of stuff. This means people whose use of a machine consists, at least 90% of the time, of basic things like a web browser, command-line terminal and/or SSH, an IM client, an MP3 player, maybe an IDE, and so on. It seems to me that if they wanted pretty aesthetics they could do a contemporary Linux desktop environment and reap the benefits, but they insist that their productivity is greatly enhanced by Mac's basic UI features and the sort of environmental/ecosystem integration to which you allude. I personally cannot see how, although I'm a huge fan of the magnetic power clip as much as the next guy -- power sockets that go bad due to the cable being jerked around at weird angles are my #1 problem with laptops, period.