Those early OS X years were a real golden age for the Mac - the hardware was quite competitive with x86, and the OS was as good as it's ever been. Eventually the wheels started coming off both.
We're in a second golden age of hardware, so I can dream that maybe one day soon Mac OS will be amazing again.
(Despite the new hardware golden age, the emulation performance here is pretty close to unusable on an M1 with Safari, unfortunately.)
Competitive in price it was not, and osx wasn't as good as you think it was. Kernel panics were a daily thing, and segmentation faults of quicktime while watching videos.
Reproducing file formats like wmv or divx was a quest in finding and installing the correct codec.
Also overheating, because to make it pretty they didn't add vents for the air to flow.
I'm talking about pre-x86. I don't recall any kernel panics or segfaults when I used a G4 Power Mac back in the day; it was certainly more stable than the Windows 98 PC I was coming from.
The Core2Duo were the first Intel Macs worth a hoot. IIRC, you could get this CPU in the white MacBook, along with an education discount and iPod rebate.
I rocked dual Xenons until early 2023's M2Pro mini (the energy savings are substantial, with minimal GPU performance degredation).
I've been Thinking Different™ly from 68k->PPC->Intel->Silicon. The two greatest performance increases have been the two most recent CPU updates, in both raw and per-watt metrics.
The entry-level, basic-bitch M4 mini is incredible... the entire computer uses less than just a comparable-performing x86's GPU.
We're in a second golden age of hardware, so I can dream that maybe one day soon Mac OS will be amazing again.
(Despite the new hardware golden age, the emulation performance here is pretty close to unusable on an M1 with Safari, unfortunately.)