@kdfrawg That was a big attraction for me as well. Had only played around with Linux until that point, and a "real" *NIX system under the hood was just plain cool to me. Seeing the iBook G4 hardware really pushed me over the edge and I had to have one.
Hard to say where Apple will take the Mac in the future, but at least they see it as a different beast from the smartphone and tablet devices, which I argue is a good thing.