After posting yesterday on the “Top Five Reasons that Leopard will be Apple’s tipping point“, it just reinforced in me that the depth of passion on the various sides of the computing table still exists (Windows; Mac; Linux).

You know what I think is happening that’s actually accelerating fanboy-dom and compelled so many people to comment? Those of us on the ‘net, and extensively using computers, have our faces in them for more total hours than ever before. With the explosion in laptop sales — most of which have Wifi cards in them — these tools are being schlepped all over the place and used as the general purpose devices they’re meant to be. All day, every day we’re accessing Web 2.0 sites, using applications, editing video and audio, communicating through Skype and webcams and much more.

So people naturally invest dollars and then themselves emotionally in their chosen computing platform. Most of us customize our device with wallpaper, sounds, applications and — because of ever larger hard drives and our extensive use spawning more digital files than ever — we structure and archive our digital lives with these devices. So it stands to reason we all have heightened awareness of our time investment as well as being intellectually invested in learning how our computers work and where stuff is located. Having anyone intimate that your choice is wrong and that you’re a schnub for choosing your computing platform is like whacking at a hornet’s nest.

As I write this I’ve had 60,000 pageviews of that post, nearly 80 comments under it and more than 500 comments on the Digg submission. Too many to address individually (and many are trolls being anonymous and nasty and are not due a response).

Windows and Linux have many, many compelling features and attractive aspects and run on cheaper hardware. But to me the obstacles and barriers to using them as productively as I do the Mac are too high (and, in fact, I have Ubuntu Linux and WinXP on this Macbook Pro now). Using these other OS’es cause me to spend a lot more time “twiddling bits” than being creative and productive.

I’m pleased with the platform I’ve chosen (Mac) and the result is I’ve invested many thousands of dollars in dozens of machines, applications, training and knowledge. Having used all three platforms extensively for many years, my chosen one allows my staff and I to be more productive and our output is remarkable ranging from color print to ebooks; video; audio; and much more. Our tech support need and hours invested in twiddling bits is now 10% of what it was when we were running Windows. The bonus is no adware. No spyware. No viruses.