Argh I HATE that phrase, they "just work" as often as any Windows PC since XP has. In the past week in fact one of my designers was complaining of problems getting some work finished on her Mac that "just works" because guess what? It didn't JUST WORK!
Note the phrase "much closer to this ideal." And actually, I switched away from XP in 2003, because XP did't just work when trying out new video codecs. OS X did.
I should add I am not a MSoft fanboy, I've owned a Mac Classic back in the day and recently a Macbook Pro. But the Macbook pro had all kinds of issues with my outboard soundcard and midi interface that my windows PC never had and in the end was glad to get rid of it.
"It works" and "it is compatible" are different. Apple does more former than latter. MS is reverse, on the hardware side, for obvious business model reasons.
