I mentioned in there the main factor is price. The MacBook seemed like a great deal compared to similar dells at the time. Today the prices are reversed :S
I ran VMWare on the MacBook but it was way too slow.
Yah Exploring is not for everyone nor is Finder. I think that the tree view in Exploring while still showing the contents of the tree is great (compared to thee sliding panes in Finder for example) and the context menu integration of many apps is also good (eg win merge and tortoise).
Context menu integration (more commonly known as shell integration) means that when you install certain programs like Tortoise, the program will add extra menu items to the context menus that show up when you right-click files of a specific type or a folder.
I love my Beyond Compare shell integration. Right-click on Folder A, choose "select left side", find Folder B, right click, choose "compare to Folder A" and then Beyond Compare pops up and diffs all the files in the two folders.
Currently to use PhoneGap you do have to get the app on app store and the URL for the initial page is hard coded in the app. it is nice though since you get a headless browser with no address bar etc. you could make your own web browser based on it that exposed the apis to all web pages.