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My point exactly.

If I have to fiddle with macports, install my own emacs and live with the Java Apple wants me to have, I would rather just buy a cheap core 2 duo notebook or a netbook and put Linux on it. The only reason to buy a Mac is if you need iTunes, Adobe stuff and Office and don't want to run Linux.

Or if you are developing for Mac (in which case it would be rather dumb to use anything else)

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It makes more sense to put an exact duplicate of your server platform (FreeBSD, Linux, Solaris) in a VM on the Mac and develop on the machine headless. Same applies to developing on Linux.

And then what is the point of using a Mac? You can do exactly that even from Windows.

For the same reasons it would be nicer to ssh into a real, not virtual, unix server machine from Mac OS X. It's a real unix underneath with a proper terminal built in. I'm temporarily doing similar at work on a Windows machine and Putty just doesn't cut it. I could look into cygwin or whatever but sod that, Ubuntu will be replacing it shortly.