I don't think you're turning this into a Mac bashing thread, as I'm an Apple fanatic and agree that the MacBooks have had more than their fair share of problems. I think Apple could've held off a bit longer on releasing the Intel products. I also think it's a combination of Intel chipsets being a bit finicky and Apple having to have their specific form factors, materials, design, and featureset. If the 15" was a couple millimeters thicker it'd probably have had far less heat/fan noise problems, but changing the form factor even minimally like that isn't an option.

I'm on my 2nd PB G4 (final-rev 1440x960 15" now, bought last November knowing full well that much faster Intel PowerBooks would be coming soon) and quite happy that I bought it. I've had no major issues with either; the first one was 2 years old and had the expected wear and tear from heavy usage as a primary machine, so after replacing the screen bezel (nicely bent from a couple drops), metal top-plate (dented as well, and pitted around the wrist areas from heat and sweat; my newer PB has TiArmor to avoid that), and keyboard myself, off to eBay it went. If I'd waited and bought a MacBook, I'd potentially have had serious support issues as I've been out of the US for most of the past year. (Although one of my two batteries is covered under the fire-hazard recall. I'm just not going to charge that one while sleeping until I can have it replaced. )

I'll get an Intel MacBook when they're on the Core 2 Duos and several months have gone by to show that Apple's gotten their Intel hardware working well.