I've never been a Mac user, and love the PC. But I will agree that, even these days, there is often some amount of "configuration" required if one wants to go off-road at all. Most of the stuff just works, IME, but some things require intervention.

As an example, my Moto RAZR has a mini-USB for power, so I figured I could charge it from my computer. Well, I could, but it required a special driver to set it in a power-supply mode. I had to go out and find the driver, then install it. For me, no problem. For someone who doesn't want to muck with this, could be a bigger deal. Of course, I don't know what would happen on a Mac if one plugged a RAZR into a USB port and it didn't have the power supply driver.

I like the PC because of the configurability aspect, but I can see how this could be a detriment to some who don't want to do this sort of thing. Again, though, all the basic stuff (such as the thing that the OP mentions) have always just worked for me, at least through XP.

Cheers.