*Sigh* This debate always seems to pop up in my life.
I've been using computers, both PC and Mac, since 1988. I began tinkering with them and building towers back in 1996. I have friends who are both Aero Engineers (high-end PC users) and Film makers (high-end Mac users) Also, my best friend is an Apple Genius.
In all that time, in all those places, knowing all these people, and having this argument God knows how many times, nothing has changed the fundamental uses for either machine, despite what their proponents want to think.
Macs are idiot-proof. Plain and simple. If you aren't an avid computer user and want something straight out of the box that will work forever and never break down since all you do it type and check email on it, then you want a Mac. Macs are created mainly for general purpose work, and not much else. It's supposed to be your "personal" computer, something you use everyday but never stress all that much.Thus, the much greater price can be justified because you'll only need to replace it once every 5+ years.
Otherwise, Macs are used for high-end,
specialized work, like video or audio editing. A $5000 G5 is not something you buy so you can use Itunes, you buy it so you can edit digital film. NO ONE in a professional industry uses those computers as their everyday machine unless they're filthy stinking rich.
PCs are for people who actually know something about computers beyond turning them on and searching Google. They are not idiot-proof, and have a fairly harsh learning curve. What they offer, though, is much greater flexibility. I can make Windows sit up, beg, and roll over when I tell it to. However, I am an advanced user, and that is what I want. If you have a slightly higher than normal level of computer knowledge, maintaining a good PC is easy. Building your own computer (something else I enjoy) isn't possible with Mac, but it is with PC, further increasing my ability to customize what I want my computer to do.
And in terms of gaming, well, there's no comparison. Macs suck for any kind of high-end gaming. More importantly, a good PC can blow a console out of the water. My PC isn't even top end anymore, but it still runs Fallout 3 much better than my friend's PS3. Also, for any kind of programing or usage that requires both graphics and lots of computing power (like my friend the engineer running Solidworks), PC comes out on top.
That's it. Beyond those settings mentioned above, I have yet to see anything besides price and personal opinion influence someone's opinion of their system one way or the other. You can not definitively state that one is better than the other because they are built for different roles and different people. Some things one will do better, some things the other will. Get used to it.
And before any Mac lovers come screaming out about how much safer Macs are or how PCs are full or viruses and Macs aren't, let remind you of a very simple point - People make viruses to get attention. If a new virus made all the PCs on the world go down, the world would be pretty fucked. If all the Macs died, well, no big loss outside the entertainment world, who would simply switch over to PCs running Vegas. Macs are not inherently better against viruses and spyware than PCs, virus makers simply don't care enough about them to bother making any viruses for them.
