something I think deserves some discussion so I'll just jot down some of the biggest points.
First off I'll disclose that I am indeed an Apple user and have a passion for Apple products; I'm not against PC of the Windows variety.
It's the same principal as flying. If you want the best possible experience, superior service, and least frustration on the plane, you might fly first class. Macs are the first class on the computer plane. That is not to say Windows based PCs are the cargo bay, but they're close. Generally, when you get them out of the box they're bloated with trial software that companies paid Dell, HP, or God knows who, to install at the factory. You'll spend your first hour uninstalling that crap ware and making your restore DVDs, running updates and getting up and running. What happens when you take a Mac out of the box? You press the power button, watch it go through a rather peppy little video welcoming you in more languages than you knew existed, and land you at a wizard that will ask you a few questions. Once you're done with that you're dumped at the desktop and you can start doing whatever it is you want to do. No bloat ware to uninstall, updates to run, etc.
But Macs are just about image, right?
Wrong. Look around a NASA Engineering meeting and you'll see tons of Macs. Take a look around a college campus; you'll see tons of Macs. In fact, MacBook (Pros) are the number one laptop on college campuses. Why? They're powerful and resilient. If you're in college, you're going to be using the hell out of your computer. It becomes a part of your life; your music, movies, video clips, photos, and tons of your work will live there. All that needs a healthy happy place to live. A place free of the constant worry about viruses and firewalls.* If your computer isn't working and you don't know what's wrong, you don't want to call Microsoft and get bounced to Dell only to get bounced to Microsoft; no, you just want it working again. With a Mac you can just schedule an appointment at anytime within a two week period of the current date and get hands on assistance from a live person who listens to you and knows the ins and outs of your computer. It isn't about image; Macs aren't just a pretty machine, they're a complete package. Macs are the computers for the rest of us. Just because you can administer an enterprise network doesn't mean you want to have to do every little thing to maintain your own computer. You don't want to have to think about it, you want it to happen. You just want it to work? You want to also have the option to do every little thing? Do you want to be able to think about 'it' but not have to? You want to edit four feature length movies without crashing? Get a Mac.
Let me go over that key point again. Macs are incredibly powerful. They're more powerful than Windows computers. There is a reason that Hollywood movies and studios edit movies and tracks on Macs. The operating system is built on an open, solid, powerful platform. Want to customize every little aspect of your computer? Want to recompile the kernel? Get a Mac. They're Unix with a beautiful UI and a slew of incredible integrated APIs. They just work. Macs aren't based on some obscure closed hardware system, they run on standardized hardware. Want to get more RAM? Don't buy it from Apple, they charge about $100/GB, just buy it at your local computer store and slap it in yourself.
You pay for what you get. Sure, you can buy excellent PCs, but they're not the same. Windows is engineered to work on the widest range of commodity hardware possible, and that hasn't even worked for Microsoft, which is a dying consumer brand (that's a blog post for another time). OS X is engineered to work on a smaller range of hardware of a higher quality. Apple backs all their products with incredible support that, like their systems, just works. Personally, I've had $595 worth of replacements or repairs performed since I've been a Mac user and I've paid nothing for that support.
* Third party firewall software and antivirus software are recommended for most computer platforms including Mac. However, Macs aren't generally a target for viruses and the overall system architecture is much more inhospitable for viruses.
