Because it's the best desktop unix machine available. Where else can you find true unix with a great user experience and full hardware and software support?
I don't use Linux because I no longer enjoy doing sysadmin crap. I also like the MacOS UI.
I don't use Linux because I no longer enjoy doing sysadmin crap. I also like the MacOS UI.
And you can get an Ubuntu machine from Dell that is very well supported.
I wouldn't recommend it to my parents, just yet (they're happy with OSX), but I wouldn't hesitate to recommend Dell+Ubuntu to people here. It might not be as sexy, but it's a setup that works pretty well. I had a tibook a number of years ago, and while it was certainly a beautiful machine that got lots of looks, in the end, I'm just as happy with my ugly clunky (but cheap and well supported) Dell.
It was pretty cool to get it, open it up, and see it boot Ubuntu. I admit I did have to tweak it just a bit (about 15 minutes of googling and config files), but I think it was one of the first ones, hopefully they've gotten even better. I chatted with some of the guys working on it at OSCON last year, and they wrote down a few of the bugs I had found.
If, on the other hand, you relish the ability to open things up and hack on them if needs be (whence "Hacker News"), then the extra effort 'fighting' with Linux is often time well spent. It's a good feeling to know a system from the ground up, or (as is the case for most of us), at least be able to figure out bits and pieces from time to time.
I'm not saying the mac doesn't need any administration -- I'm saying that it's a lot less, and it's less annoying. I haven't ever had to recompile my darwin kernel nor sit around tweaking DMA and PIO settings.