I've been a Mac user all my life, and I've noted that there's a few things that might drasitcally improve the appearance / performance / public opinion of Macs -
1) Apple shouldn't be so greedy with the RAM. Just a few weeks ago I finally added 128 MB to the original 64 MB of RAM in my iMac --
big speedup, for about $30. If Apple could just pack in a bit more memory as standard, the computers would seem a good bit faster.
2) Stop with all the weird colors. We didn't need the Flower Power and Blue Dalmatian. (How well did they actually sell, anyway?) Graphite, Quicksilver, and Snow are the way to go -- might want to keep away from the 'fruity' appearance.
3) There are a few things that Macs are known to be strong in - multimedia, for example. Apple should look at these strong points and really try to reinforce Apple's position with them. So, maybe put at least Combo drives in every computer - and make it so Disc Burner can do multi-session CD-RWs for crying out loud!
4) Give us other GUIs than Aqua... I don't even have OS X myself, but I've used it a small bit, and I can't say I love Aqua. Give us more options, themes and such. Also, the Dock effects are a bit too weird, clunky, and overdone, in my opinion.
5) Obviously, the GHz barrier has to be broken soon. Regardless of how much (or little) MHz matters, the public doesn't know about it. It seems like the G4 might break that barrier soon, though, with Apollo. (Oh, and The Reg's stuff about the G5 looks like mainly bullshit.
)
6) Switch from PowerPC to Athlon