Computers don't fail because of Viruses, well at least
extremely rarely. Maybe your computer needed to be reformatted but that doesn't mean your computer "failed". I can't argue with anecdotal evidence other than to offer my own where an old roommate had to repeatedly send his Macbook back to apple (even after they instructed him to reformat it) to get repaired. They eventually had to send him a whole new laptop.
And I'm sorry to say but Apple is pathetic when it comes to patching vulnerabilties. And they've got more vulnerabilities in the first place.
Here's a recent example where Apple was far behind the pack in fixing a publicly known vulnerability.
Here's an overall comparison of the two companies. I've seen many others (usually by way of Slashdot) but that's what came up in a google.
If the market share were swapped between Apple and Microsoft, Apple would be having the same "problems" that Windows has and Microsoft would be basking in the sunshine as Apple has been able to do. Like I said before, why would a malware author go after 7% of the market when he can go after 90%? It's much more efficient to go after that one massive block.
The GM analogy doesn't work. Sorry, it's just not at all similar. Your steering wheel is more like an embedded USB controller than it is the OS. GM doesn't bother advertising who makes the steering wheel just as noone gives a crap who makes the USB controller in a Dell PC. And in this analogy, Dell = your dealer. And as we've seen, dealers can give GM a bad name even though it's not GMs fault just like OEMs can do the same to MS.
I completely understand why Apple does what it does. BUT they and their fanboys continue to sling mud about things that just don't make sense like saying other hardware is inferior. It's just not. And making fun of driver support is just absurd considering the lack of driver support in OSX. Microsoft certainly recognizes some of the problems they have with branding and support. That's why they created the whole "Vista Ready"/"Vista Capable" thing (which is a mess in itself because of Intel).
And Apple did at one point allow other companies to make clones. They just killed the licensing for them and got away with it. This relationship is much like GM and their dealers. Apple was able to can the contracts much like Chrysler and GM are doing now (although Apple wasn't under bankruptcy protection).
I'm not really questioning these decisions that Apple has done but just the arguments people make. If OSX was such a great OS, it wouldn't matter what hardware was running on it. It should be able to compete with windows on an even playing field. But it can't. Shoot, it can't even compete with Windows now (90% vs 7%)..