I grew up using Macs. In school, I used PC's. In college, I used my own Mac and worked on PC's at work. I was an ITS technician. After working with comps for 16 years, I have to say that the overall experience is definitely better on a Mac. A lot of criticism that the Mac evokes are from its OS9 days. OSX has fixed most, if not all of it. It is the most stable OS (Built on BSD) and is so easy and intuitive, its insane. Also, the suite of software that comes with it is amazing... iTunes for music, iMovie for digital video editing, iPhoto for picture collections and output, and iDVD for out of the box DVD authoring (and seemlessly integrates the previous three so you can use stuff from those apps). Yes apple WAS behind the curve on MHZ, but not anymore. With the G5, we've at LEAST caught up and in some areas surpassed most PC's in the speed area. Yes, for the 'high end' it costs 3000. But, a similarly configured pc is more. (look at the high end Dells and match them to the G5's specs). And Apple only uses high quality components which is why (study after study shows this) Apples last longer and stay more relevant as a usable computer (as OSes evolve... I am running OSX Jaguar SERVER on my 233mhz Original Bondi Blue iMac -the first imac in 98- quite decently). I don't dislike PCs, but I dislike people who use PC's who bash the Mac for no REAL reason-especially since none of them have used one (or used one lately, which is a totally different experience than the Mac of old). If you have problems deciding, go to an Apple store... take a day and just go and enjoy yourself. The stores are quite amazing. Anyway, another thing is the software. Yes there is a huge amount of software available for the PC. But, look at ratios... there HAS to be... its 95% of the market! I look at it this way. I compare the PCs software to the Ocean... its HUGE, but it is full of pollutants... a lot of the software sucks major ass leaving only a few really good programs that you can use. Well, on the Mac, we get those REALLY good programs. We are a *small* yet pure water oasis. All of our programs are usually ports of the best. Microsoft, BY ITS OWN ADMISSION, says that Office for the Mac is better than the windows version. Any real program on the PC you want, either there is a Mac port/version, or there is another program that does the same thing. All this goes for the games. I love games, but on the Mac platform, they aren't like the PC one. I only get the best selling games and the best overall games from the PC side, like Max Payne, Deus Ex, Warcraft 3 (actually EVERY blizzard game made), THPS, all the Sims games, going to get DNF, MP2, etc. We never got 'Paintball extreme' because there was no need. Anyway, these are my observations growing up in both worlds... I ended up staying mostly on the Mac side because I just enjoy it much more. And if there is a game that I absolutely need to play that's not on the Mac, I just go hijack Threeleggedfrog's computer to do it.
Anyway, good luck and I hope I haven't convoluted your question too much. I just let my mind write.