You know what I've been told at the Apple Store? Buy an Apple wireless router. Great advice. Sure, it "just works" if I completely re-do my home network.

Why is it Apple's fault that your router sucks?

I don't have any issues with my Windows PC. I think that most people that have issues either have bad hardware, inadequate machines, no idea how to use a computer, or Windows ME.

As someone who's supported PCs since before Windows existed, I have some thoughts on this statement.

First, the "bad hardware" option is doing a lot of heavy lifting, there. How would you classify BSODs caused by a bad driver? Because those happen a lot. It's made worse when PC vendors don't update the drivers on their own web sites. They tell you specifically to only get the drivers from them, and not from the chip manufacturers, but (for example) the video driver for my laptop hasn't been updated on the laptop manufacturer's page for over a year. I'm reasonably certain NVIDIA has come out with updates since then.

I had one laptop that was intermittently BSODing for some time until I figured out that the laptop manufacturer's WiFi driver was out of date and buggy.

Hardware definitely plays a part, but that's part of the difference between PCs and Macs (just like Android and iOS): Apple picks and chooses a specific set of hardware and supports it; Microsoft supports a vast array of hardware but leaves the OS integration and support to the manufacturers. It's a double-edged sword: I can custom-design a PC for myself, or find the laptop that's perfect for what I want to do, but it also means I may be at the mercy of mediocre support.

With Apple, at least you always know it's Apple's problem.

In any case, your qualifications above (bad hardware, doesn't know how to use a PC) can hand-wave away whatever you like, but as someone who's been paid to support both, my experience has been that Windows PCs require more support.

The greatest mystery of the iPhone to me is how it succeeded while being locked to the single worst carrier in the US for it's first 3 years.

As someone who's worked with (and experienced) all four major carriers, I certainly wouldn't agree with the above statement, and I know many others who would not, either.

Perhaps the answer to the mystery is that not everyone has had experiences that match yours, and (most likely) the happy ones haven't bothered to blog about it.

(A quick search will find you declarations of any of the four majors as the worst; I personally would rather be beaten than do business with Sprint, but I know people who are very happy with them. C'est la vie.)

The battery life in every Windows laptop (5 or 6 from different manufacturers) that I've ever had has deteriorated quickly and been total crap within a year or so. Most of them overheat. I would never buy an Apple laptop, but my girlfriend has one and her battery lasts just as long as when she first got the machine.