Apple Macs? The preserve of macchiato-swigging designers and web developers, right? PCs? The preserve of science labs and offices. Or so we thought. But pictures of the Nasa scientists controlling the Mars landing of Curiosity rover showed them all hovering behind Macs. What gives?

Things have changed, explains Adam Banks, editor-in-chief of MacUser magazine, says. "Macs and PCs used to be different," he says. "You could do some things better on one and some on the other. Today, the technical differences are negligible; a Mac is just a really neatly designed PC with an Apple logo on it."