I hate to be "that crazy Mac guy" but I have found that Mac OS X is an excellent platform for development. The development environment is much closer to Linux than Windows, which is good for my eventual deployment target. Leopard 10.5 comes with rails ready to go. The performance of "everything at once" is stellar on my MacBook. The toolset is what really makes the difference, though.
Here's the dev setup I use:
- TextMate as my editor/IDE is awesome. iRb is a snap and I can make it feel just like emacs. - CSSEdit is an amazing app for live CSS authoring. - To do cross platform browser testing, I use Parallels to run both Windows and Linux. On the same platform I can test browsers for the "big three" OSes. - There are some amazing vector and image editors out there. I use Intaglio, VectorDesigner, and Pixelmator. All cheaper than going the heavyweight Adobe route, and just as good for my purposes (or better). - I use OmniFocus and OmniPlan for planning, OmniOutliner for brainstorming, and OmniGraffle for knocking out quick diagrams and such. - Then there is Automator and Forklift for automating routine tasks, 1Password for managing all my passwords and such, Fetch for SFTP, MySQL Administrator and Query Browser and Spotlight/Quicksilver/ Preview combo for keeping all of my Pragmatic Programmers PDF books at my fingertips
Mac gives me the best of all worlds so I don't have to make choices between windows and linux, and I really get best in class editors, productivity apps, and graphic design tools.