umm.... if they are running LINUX then they are MUCH more like a MAC than a Windows system. Mac just "borrowed" a unix kernel because they are too unoriginal to design an OS kernel themselves. OS 9 and earlier didn't even have a kernel which is why they had to abandon it! Also, after years of Apple telling the world how terrible Intel based platforms are they suddenly switched to them and then claimed they are "twice as fast" as the previous G5 systems. Similarly for years Apple blasted Micro$oft for having a command prompt available in their OS and told everyone that they are TERRIBLE and ARCHAIC things to have as part of the OS, but then when Apple releases OSX they tell the world that the command prompt makes it a more advanced and more powerful OS.

So the hardware in Macs is the same and the OS is much closer to what the IFE runs that Windows is. The only thing apple "designed" is the pretty artwork/graphics in the OS - which I do like. But don't give them more credit than they deserve or try to distance them unduly from LINUX systems.

Furthermore, the software that Panasonic is running inside the OS is probably the problem - not the OS itself. If Panasonic wrote the software to run on Mac it would likely be just as bad. In apple's defense though it would probably be a better design to have just built a touchscreen version of the iMac into the aircraft seats and provide a file server with all the music and movies loaded in to iTunes. It would then work much better with the iPhones and iPod Touch. And the reality is that a lot of people have those devices and would love to have them work WELL on the larger IFE screen. The Mac OS boot from network function would probably work well for an Aircraft IFE scenario. The aircraft industry just doesn't seem to understand this type of technology well enough to make good decisions.