I only asked WHAT are the great developments in hardware and software over the last 20 years ?
Okay.... well, we can start with anything internet, email and voice over IP related.
Whether it's backend stuff like the vast changes from simple static HTML 3.2 pages to the modern HTML5/CSS/AJAX driven sites.
Or Skype which emerged out of nowhere in 2003, and by 2011 widespread enough for Microsoft to reckon it was worth writing out a cheque for $8.5 billion.
Or we could look at the vast improvements in the Apple platform from the old PowerPC and OS 7/8/9 to the present Intel and OS X platform (OS X has undergone an amazing transformation itself from its original 10.0 to the present, incredibly powerful 10.9).
Alternatively, we could look at hardware.... which has reduced in size and yet is faster and more efficient than could ever have been imagined.
The developments in the last 20 years are simply too innumerable to list.
Others have had experiences with it that you haven't had
Given I've been using Macs since the days of the SE series and OS 7.1, and have used pretty much all of their hardware and operating system software in-between (including clones and Be), I think I've had more than enough experience with the platform to know it inside out.
So by all means present me with conflicting viewpoints, all I ask is that you do your homework first, otherwise you risk being rebutted with varying degrees of force depending on the stupidity of the unsubstantiated viewpoint proposed !
The Apple platform is by no means perfect, no platform is, there is no such thing as perfection in IT, nor is there really such a thing as one thing being better than another in IT. However the Apple platform is exceedingly far from being the bug ridden, insecure, locked-down, evil platform that many here have enjoyed making it out to be over the years...