So what exactly 'crashed' on your Mac then -- if you never lost data, never had a hard drive rebuilt, never had this, never had that?

When I say crash, I'm not talking about someone mucking up their install of Windows, I'm talking about a critcal failure somewhere in the actual hardware of the machine. Mac or not, if you have a powersupply that shorts out and causes the components inside the case to arc, then whatever operating system you use, isn't going to matter.

And to that end, Windows does not equal hardware: so saying that it's hard for Windows to be 'stable' because of hardware is a moot point: all you have to do it look at Linux and see some of the most stable machines available. Just because someone decides to buy very cheap (as in shoddy) hardware, or install junkware on their machine and end up "crashing" it (i.e. I acidentally trashed windows and I don't know how to get data off the harddrive) -- you don't have near the lure of that on a Mac, simply because most of the fun things people download don't WORK on them (unless you emulate it).

So sure, Apple controls and keeps a tight fist on their hardware: that's also why two comparitively competent machines from Apple or not, usually has a HUGE price gap. Not hundreds of dollars, thousands of dollars.

Want a quick easy trick to "never lose a byte of data" -- it's very simple, it's called using multiple harddrives/partitions. That way, it doesn't matter what OS you are using; as long as you don't purposefully erase said partition, or have the drive physically fail, in and of itself it is a small form of data protection.