Many software engineers and computer scientists use Macs, so no, it's not just for the technically-illiterate.
I use OS X because it gives me a nice UNIX shell (I spend a lot of time on the command line), with a desktop environment that works very smoothly out of the box (which Linux doesn't have).
I used Linux as my main OS for 10 years before that, and my last job was mostly writing Linux kernel drivers for custom hardware, so I think it's fair for me to say I know the basics of Linux.
For me, Linux was "a phase". It's nice if you are willing and able to spend a lot of time tweaking it. I (and most of my colleagues) simply don't have time for that anymore. We have our research to do, other hobbies to do, other people to entertain, etc, so we want a system that "just works". However, we are still power users and want to have a nice UNIX command line. OS X is the only OS that offers this combination at the moment.
At some point in your life money will become less of a problem, time more of a problem. That's when many people switch to Macs. It allows us to buy time with money.
Hardware-wise, MacBook Pro combines pretty good performance with insanely low weight and insanely long battery life. Very few Windows laptops can come anywhere close (many do 2 of the 3, but very few do all 3), and of those that do, they are just as expensive if not even more expensive.
And yeah, if your friends are technical but not in CS, you'll get called sheep and stuff by the ignorant Apple hate-boys, because apparently that's the cool thing to do now.
But hey, at some point you'll stop caring about what other people think of you, too.