My mother is very stubborn. She's got experience using computers, but hasn't made the effort to become "computer literate". So she knows word processors and web browsing but never leaves her comfort zone. She'd always used PCs at work before she retired, and was very strongly against mac for no clear reason. "It's different than what I'm used to", and so it appears to not be able to do anywhere near as much, and she didn't have the patience to leave her comfort zone. This is the most common issue I see.
So she kept having problems with her computer. I'd try to walk her through a fix or fix it when I got over there (300mi) but there was little to nothing I could to do to fix it. I never badgered her to get a mac. I would remind her sometimes that "if this were a mac I would know how to fix it", or "I'm not familiar with this problem because it can't happen on a mac". She broke her HP, her Compaq, and her Dell, each lasted about 2 years and went through ~3 wipe-and-reformat (with 100% data loss) before being unsalvageable. (I didn't work on her computer, she often had techs make house calls to fix things, and techs onsite-by-the-hour to fix malware is very expensive because of how long it can take)
Finally I got a call, "You're coming down here for your birthday right? Good. I've HAD IT, I can't stand these windows computers anymore, I'm getting a mac! And you're going to set it up!" It was almost cute how she made it sound like that was going to be a hard thing to do and that she was somehow sharing her frustration with me. OK sounds good! "BTW, you're going to hate it for the first week. Everything's going to look different, be named something different, and be in a different place. But everything you need will still be there. You're just going to have to re-learn it. So you're going to need to spend a few weeks getting used to it before you stop hating it." She was OK with that.
It went pretty much as expected. The first week she hated it, because everything looked different, everything was called something different, and everything moved around. She already knew WHAT to do, but had to re-learn HOW to do it. I installed remote control software, which she referred to as "the hand of god that comes to my computer and fixes it". I'm ok with that I guess. First week was lots of calls she hated everything about it. But I was able to remote in and show her where things were or make adjustments that would be difficult to explain over the phone. I could look at her screen and decode what she was saying because she was also having problems describing her issues. Second week, not so many calls, and she'd calmed down quite a bit. By the third week she had reached the "well this isn't so bad after all" point.
It took about two months before she finally admitted this was a really good change. "Why didn't you tell me to get a mac sooner?" "I did, a few times, and you were very much against it, so I decided to let you make that decision entirely on your own." She's now one of the biggest mac advocates I know, and has convinced more people to switch than I have. That was in late 2006, when the first G5 iMacs came out. I've since replaced her computer twice with some bargain newer ones. She has yet to actually break her computer, and it's gone from the most unreliable necessary-evil in her life to her rock of stability in a crazy world.
I'm not going to say a mac is the best computer for everyone, or even the best computer. But there's a lot of people that could really benefit from one. I like to say, "If you're looking for a new computer, and you ask someone what computer you should get, and they immediately have an answer for you, you're not going to receive good advice from them. They're going to recommend their favorite computer, the computer that's best for them, not what's best for you. They're only truly going to give you a good answer if they ask you a lot of questions about how you use your computer and what you need to use it for."
So don't be that person that recommends someone get a mac based only on how well your mac is working out for you. Make sure it's the right computer for them.
