handicapple

myth: a mac isn't just another pc
reality: a mac is just another pc with some hardware interfaces broken for the sake of vendor lock-in

myth: a mac can do anything a dell can do
reality: you can't format the hard drive for a standard os because bootcamp won't let you, windows needs special drivers from apple but some things simply don't work, and the situation is even worse in linux

myth: osx and mac hardware are tightly/vertically integrated to work well together
reality: nothing about the hardware has been enhanced for osx, but apple has specifically locked osx, thus it runs fine on other machines if you remove the locks. taking away your choices is not a benefit to you, and if using a mac was really your best option then they wouldn't need to cripple the os to limit your options

myth: apple embraces open source, osx is open like linux
reality: you can view the source for maybe 1% of apple's code and you can't recompile any of it. even the 3rd party "open source" stuff (a small portion of osx) can't be recompiled for the most part

myth: apple "thinks differently" and embraces individuality and personal expression
reality: osx is by far the least customizable desktop, having fewer options for layout, fonts, colors, and so on than windows, and much less than linux. also, interesting things like building a computer with a nano-itx board in a rosewood humidor or a hello kitty lunchbox are simply not an option for mac users, unless they want to break the law

myth: photo editing, graphic design, music production, and anything/everything "creative" is easier on a mac
reality: apple's ilife/etc.. software isn't used professionally for the most part. professional software (particularly adobe's creative suite) always has windows versions, and is typically better supported on windows. for example, adobe released 64-bit photoshop on windows months ahead of its mac release because a number of mac programming interfaces don't support 64-bit software (carbon in particular)

myth: osx runs on the mach microkernel, and microkernels are more stable than monolithic kernels
reality: that feature has been removed for performance reasons

myth: macs have excellent security
reality: osx has fewer security features than any other major os, far less than windows or linux, but it is true that macs have security through obscurity due to having a small minority of desktop share and almost none of the server market