  When I switched to the Apple platform, I knew that I couldn't stand dealing with Microsoft's buggy, unreliable, badly-designed operating systems. Mind you, (at least for compatibility purposes) I still use Microsoft Office, but that's about it from Redmond from me. When I switched, David gave me a bit of a hard time from time to time, particularly when I'd update something, and something else would break.
I was so convinced that having a Unix kernel under Mac OS X I would never experience serious problems, that I resented it. I treated the computer as an appliance: you turn it on and it works , no maybes, not reboots every few hours, and no non-deterministic behavior as one got with Windows 95, 98, etc... Well, I am beginning to understand the value of non-absolute (black & white) thinking (look at my Distorted Thinking article for more details). While the Mac platform is infinitely better in most ways, when it breaks, though, it *really* breaks. I am sitting in a Starbucks, waiting for my last candidate for one of the roles in the short (filming on the 4th and showing on the 14th of September!). As soon as I am done with him, I am off to the Apple store to demand they diagnose this thing properly. Its previous serious crash (when I was at the beginning of my trip around the world in January/February/March) resulted in me having to wipe the disk and start from scratch. And since I didn't have most of my application CDs, I was stuck with the minimum. I survived. Now, however, we are getting to the point that I can no longer just brush it off. This morning, while I tried to repair disk problems on the machine, it started some particularly obnoxious behavior: it started spitting out the disks I'd insert. For those not familiar with Macs, that means you cannot even diagnose hardware problems. You cannot re-install to try to fix the problem. You cannot even back up, unless you do that to the network. Having learned from my last experience, I won't be losing any data. I will lose about a day re-installing a whole bunch of software, and of course, I've been in a pretty heightened anxiety state, since this machine is my work-horse.
It goes everywhere with me, I do all my film-related activities on it, and in some ways, it's my security blanket. When I feel I need to go out and be among people, my standard M.O. is to bring the laptop to a Starbucks (no, I don't drink their coffee! ), surf the net, write blogs (as I am doing now), or do whatever else may come to mind. And losing one's security blanket, even for a few days, and even at the age of 39, is very scary.
So here I am, hoping one of the Apple Geniuses at the store will wave a magic wand over the machine and make it all better. I don't resent the waste of time I predict as much as how I keep taking these (in objective view) minor things and escalate them (inside my head and my body) to crises. As though I haven't had enough crises lately. 
