Indeed. In a way, Apple just sells software, which happens to require a laptop or phone shaped dongle!
Maybe not... Ever heard of Unibeast?
See that smiley I used in my comment? It matters. You
completely missed the point…
It is just too sad that Apple don't have a passable AMD graphics driver. Before I upgraded the graphics to R9 380 on my workstation (had a GTX 650 Ti) I was running OS X on it too.
Not passable? Meaning what? Apple's graphics drivers are rock-solid (Steam reported that Mac users had only 5% as many crashes as Windows), and support pro 3D apps without special, expensive "pro" drivers like on Windows. I run an AMD HD 7970 (same as R9 280x) on my Mac Pro now, and it's not even flashed with Mac firmware.
Stop comparing with Apple. Apple developers have by far the easiest job around when it comes to compatibility. They're all in one building deciding how their software runs on their hardware.
Linux has the added difficulty that there are hundreds of different platform variants around it should be compatible with. With many to come in the future.
Apple also does not compete in markets where performance of large applications matter; they only have to optimize at most for small applications. In this respect, iOS and OSx are toy operating systems and this is reflected in Apple's retreat from servers and high end desktop and portable computers which I can hardly blame them for; most of their sales and profits comes from iOS anyway.
Define "large". Apple doesn't do classic DB and server stuff, but their pro media apps certainly are "large" by most definitions. Designing software to manage thousands of photos
without lagging is not easy. Designing software to edit video
without rendering is not easy (Apple accomplished that
years before everyone else). No, Apple doesn't focus on the server. They focus on UI performance, which is a very different skill set, and one which others mostly struggle with.