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Basic gist of things:
Apple was pretty popular in the days of yore.
Microsoft, a company that had been developing programming tools, bought a version of DOS to seal a deal with IBM and found that there was money in OS's.
They developed Windows and sold it on cheaper imported hardware, stealing a fair bit of Apple's thunder, which was also lacking due to Steve Jobs buggering off to found NeXT Systems.
A lot of bad decisions and lost money later and Apple needed a completely new image, so they bought Jobs' little company for his Unix based OS, which was used to build OS X.
Jobs being the marketing type, pointed out that students and trendy types like bright shiny things, and the iMac and iBook were born.
Since then, Apple has toned down the mad colours and curves in favour of more mainstream styles.
Apple fans are either long time fans from ye olde days, or converts that have bought into Apple's whole ideology.
I almost bought a Mac a year or so ago after converting to Linux, but after buying a G2 iPod Nano 4GiB, I decided not to bother as buying an iPod was a horrible mistake that I'd never repeat (really awful quality aluminium casing, I've had to beat it to get it to turn off, and my headphones have almost disintegrated... If that's what a 1ft drop does, there's something wrong as my phone (Sony K800i) has had much worse many times over from 3 different owners (I bought it, let my parents have it, and got it back again) and it's in pretty much mint condition).
I've managed to get my mitts on two Apple laptops and both are completely ruined, though I've had similarly old PC's that would still boot and run fine (Win95 on a 486 is horrible, but boredom + QBasic = less boredom).
Apple's big advantage is their OS.
It's built on BSD Unix (Darwin Project), but unlike other *nix OS's, they have better 3rd party support, meaning more commercial apps like Photoshop and more official hardware support.
Unix is, by design, more security oriented than Windows, and Unix like OS's tend to be more modular and less greedy, meaning you can do more on less hardware.
Strip away the applications, the marketing and the hardware though, and there's little that you can't do with Linux (Ubuntu with Compiz can do all the fancy pants visual effects and there's a number of system search tools).
I'm not anti-Apple, I wouldn't buy a computer built by Microsoft either (my Microsoft wireless mouse had a seizure and I'm on my 3rd Xbox 360 :[), but I really hate the elitism of Apple fanboys who think Windows is used by idiots and - to quote a Mac user I know - "Linux is a poor man's OS X"...
Each OS has it's benefits and weaknesses, and if you know what you're doing, you can do a lot with each.
I do support Apple's stance on EFI replacing BIOS use as EFI would essentially allow users to run any compliant hardware under any compliant OS.
Intel's EFI basically means that a piece of hardware has it's driver built into itself on a ROM chip.
The OS talks to the EFI system, meaning that every OS uses the same drivers.
Microsoft is reluctant to support it because you could install Linux with full hardware support once ye olde BIOS is dead and gone.
Apple supports Windows by using BIOS emulation on top of their EFI implementation.
OS X is well suited to average skilled people who don't play PC games who want a secure and stable system that'll be good for office, artistic and general use without worrying too much about security.
Windows is well suited to gamers and general users who don't mind putting up with security and odd quirks that can be worked around.
Linux is well suited to technical types that can work around poorer hardware support and lack of 3rd party support from companies like Adobe.
Personally, I'm happy with my Intel Core 2 Duo 17" widescreen Samsung laptop :/
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It was only a couple years ago that Mac finally gave in and admitted that Intel is superior, after us Windows users have been using them forever.
