well its sort of like the difference between a camaro and a corvette.

Both will get you from point a to b very fast. Underneath their skin their motors are essentially identical(pushrod V8). The difference however is two fold.

1. Refinement- although a corvette is not a precise german version of automotive und schteel…it certainly has a much better wieght ratio, suspension and “feel” than a camaro.

–macs can tweak both their hardware as they will since they have essentially a closed system. This allows a level of refinement that is unattainable to PC’s.

2. Marketing- camaros are an also ran… the corvette is “the” aspirational sportscar of the american public(blue and even some white collar). Not so expensive as to be out of reach…but pricey enough so that not every schmo can afford one.

–Apple has perfected the marketing of consumer electronics..and has changed the face of all product marketing. Take a look at the decreased time from concept to production in the automarket…a direct result of Apples success.

BTW…I hate apple fanboys, the ipod and the iphone. The DRM letter from Jobs was as blatant a corporate snowjob as I have ever seen and I think that the iphone will be buggy and tarnish apples record.

Penn State’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering gives all of their grad students Mac laptops (http://www.apple.com/education/profiles/pennstate/). Research and work that was previously hammered out in Engineering labs for hours on end is now done by the grad students whenever and wherever they want to work.

It still burns me to hear people rattle off cliches about what a Mac is better for and what a PC is better for. Truth be told now that Macs run Intel processors and there is Boot Camp and Parallels and probably a half dozen more applications in development which will allow Windows applications to run on a Mac (either in full OS emulation or as standalone apps), there is technically nothing a PC is better at. As these apps get better the line between Windows and OS X will begin to blur. I have no doubt that at some point in time Windows games will eventually run flawlessly in OS X, so using gaming as an excuse for buying a PC is eventually going to fall short as well.

The advantage of running Windows right now is solely the price. When it’s bundled with your run of the mill low-end PC you can get a machine that meets your needs on even the most stringent of budgets. That same machine will most likely not survive an upgrade to the next release of Windows. What you get with a Mac (even on the low end) is a machine that is going to be able to run the newest OS released by Apple for an indefinite amount of time. There are Beige Box Macs that are running various flavors of OS X without any problems and they came out in the mid to late 1990s. With a Mac you will also get a machine that retains its value over an extended period of time simply because it is possible to put a modern OS on it several years after it was purchased. You also get the benefit of an OS that was designed specifically for the hardware it is running on. Combine that with a system that will require much less maintenance than I’ve personally experienced with any flavor of Windows or Linux and you’ve got a product that will enable you to be more productive over a longer period of time.