[MadMax]

Things like software should work rightout of the box

I am directly quoting a news entry from CTRL+ALT+DEL about Vista in reponse:

So then people will say "But d00d, Microsoft should have tested the system themselves. Why do we have to pay to find bugs for them. Fucking Microsoft, releasing an unfinished product!", and that just smacks of ignorance. There are millions of combinations of computer hardware and software, and it's completely impossible to check all of them for compatibility within an in-house testing environment, or even within an open beta test like Microsoft ran last year.

The point is, our age-old ideas of "This just came out, I'm buying it the day it came out, it had better be flawless as soon as I take it out of the box" doesn't hold true for stuff like computer software anymore. It's not like we buy a toaster, and the toaster company knows that if you're plugging it in in the United States, you're using a 120v 60hz socket, and they can extensively test that toaster under those conditions.

I think he has a point there. Computers are so variable these days that the complex software we use cannot run like Win 3.1 did on traditional machines. I don't agree with the slow development of the drivers for Vista, but "little bugs" in a new OS will probably never be sorted out upon release; that's what updates are for.
Since you mentioned Macs, I know that MacOS "runs out of the box" without updates. But that's because Apple who programmed the OS is the same company that builds the computers the OS is running on. Microsoft on the other hand has to make Vista as compatible as possible for every little piece of hardware by every little manufacturer. Or rather, manufacturers should program working drivers so their hardware runs on Vista. Depends on how you look at it