I mentioned in there the main factor is price. The MacBook seemed like a great deal compared to similar dells at the time. Today the prices are reversed :S
I ran VMWare on the MacBook but it was way too slow.
Yah Exploring is not for everyone nor is Finder. I think that the tree view in Exploring while still showing the contents of the tree is great (compared to thee sliding panes in Finder for example) and the context menu integration of many apps is also good (eg win merge and tortoise).
Currently to use PhoneGap you do have to get the app on app store and the URL for the initial page is hard coded in the app. it is nice though since you get a headless browser with no address bar etc. you could make your own web browser based on it that exposed the apis to all web pages.