Thanks for the input guys.

I was really wanting to figure it out, but I really can't see the reason for it. The historical thing seems like a likely explanation.

My personal experience is that the OS gets out of the way and lets me get on with stuff, whereas I find Windows like a constantly whinging child in the back ground. I can ignore it for so long while I'm in the app, but eventually I'll have to deal with it.

Indeed. The last time custom PC did a direct comparison, the mac screen was quite poor.

Really? The only time I have to "deal with the OS" is when I'm messing about with my network settings, which is not something most people have to do. Oh, and I have to give permission for some things like installing software - but that's true on most modern OS.

I have Windows 7 at work, XP on my netbook and Xubuntu on my main PC. Most of the time I don't notice the difference. It goes :

Click on application; Use application.

The Eizos are about the best and better than the mac displays.

It's just stuff like navigating the hard drive, the desktop, the interface. IMHO (and that's all this is) it feels like it's been thrown together with the after thought that someone's going to have to sit down and use it. OS dialogues that don't make sense to me but require me make a choice. Alongside that, admittedly less of an accusation for the likes of Adobe, Windows apps really never feel very well thought out. Again, there's little consistencies, buttons and options that aren't obvious as to their function, general fugliness. Why? Because they know they can, and you're all so used to it you (presumably) don't see it.
Quick for instance - MS Pagemaker or whatever the MS page layout software is called. Trying to turn off auto-hyphenation when a word splits across lines. Tried hunting the option down in something like the 'paragraph' tools. Nope. Tried the 'Formatting' tab. Nope. Hmm. Maybe it's under 'Font'. Hmm. Maybe it's under one of the page layout options. Nope. Perhaps it's in a text box option. I'll try right-clicking and seeing if it's buried in a drop down. Nope.
I had to go to 'Language' (but of course!) and uncheck something.

That sounds like a problem with the application to me. Is MS Office any more intuitive on a Mac?

Not particularly.

Like I said, it's just me. As Mark said, if she's used to Windows, spend money on a good display, Lightroom and Photoshop and I'm sure she'll be happy enough.

You need to be wary of people using macs for photography. They tend to hide their long lenses under them and sequester themselves in bushes.

This is the reason, I think.

Apple was the first to have OS-level colour management in 1993 (I think) whereas Windows users had to wait until something like 1997 and Linux until 1998. As we all know, a year is a long time in tech; 4 years is an eternity in which to build up a lead.

And there's certainly a lot of momentum.

Most of the arty customers I have only use one PC. An ancient box used for SAGE.

Someone had to. Good work that man!

Ok, in a related area, what do you guys do about full SD cards? Do you carry spare SD cards with you, or a laptop, or a tablet or what? What's the "preferred" solution there?

I've got about 6 16GB Class 10 Samsungs, a bunch of 8 GBs, some 4GBs. I've never filled them all on a shoot. That'd be silly. Generally, I'll get through about 2 and a half of the 16GB cards on a longer shoot.
After the shoot, they get downloaded into Lightroom then formatted in camera.

I have CF cards for the big camera. A 4GB, 8GB and 16GB. I've not yet managed to fill any one of them on a shoot - the 16GB takes around 600 RAW images.

I download them to the pooter (Aperture, as I'm a Mac head and have a thing against Adobe I won't go into now), and like the Prof erase the cards in the camera. I don't format every time I empty the card.

The compact uses a 4GB SD card, and again I've not yet managed to fill it.

Quality