I'm considering an Apple mac, probably one of the new iMac's.

Anyone got any thoughts?

can I have yer old PC?!

My brother works in some IT related field and he won't have owt apart from a Mac, reckons they knock spots off any other pc. When I priced them up a couple of weeks ago they're about three times as much as a normal pc for a similar spec.

Hope that helps.

Oh aye, they're not cheap. But I know that.

I've used both Apple Macs and PCs for a number of years - for actual operating I much prefer the Apple Mac as I think it's much easier and more intuitive to use, applications are easy to install . . . AND the iMacs (with Intel processors) can also be used as a PC (I have Windows XP loaded on mine - you have to have a copy of the OS to install), so it's the best of both worlds

PCs have a lot more software available for games, etc., but refer back to the Apple Mac being able to do both. The Mac is more expensive than a base level PC - think it's around £799 for the cheapest model - but the performance I've witnessed is better than these base level PCs anyway.

Oh, and I don't have to use anti-virus, etc., when using the Mac

Just my two pence worth :)

I think a lot depends on what your wanting to do, video or picture editing then the mac wins hands down, go into any design studio and most will be using macs. For general day to day crap like browsing the internet or making up docs i dont personally see much difference. If you spent $1500 on a pc and the same on a mac performance would be very similiar and the pc would probably just take it on bench mark testing. Oh and one other thing i hate this crap about macs being sooooooooo much safer and stable than pc's its utter bolloxs macs just dont have the viruses written for them to the same level as pc's. If your writing a viruses do you want to attack 2-3 percent or 95. I work on both types of machine and it really all boils down to what you want to do.
Just my 2 pence worth!!!

Have you updated to the latest version of OSX - Snow Leopard? If you have, then you will find that there is an Antivirus package included in it..... Viruses and Trojans may be rare on Mac, but they're not unknown and the difference isn't that Mac is inherently more secure - it's that there's so few of them out there compared to PCs that they're not seen particularly as worth attacking by hackers. It's called "Security through Obscurity"....

Macs do tend to be more stable, but there's a price to pay for that. The reason is that Apple control the software and hardware, and make sure it works together properly - this means you are effectively forced to buy their (more expensive) hardware unless you're prepared to delve into the murky world of trying to put OSX on a PC - known as a Hackintosh, and technically illegal as well as a long way from simple. If you like to fiddle with the innards of your PC by updating Graphics Cards etc you will find your options severely limited because it's about what Apple will allow.

You pay a premium to get a Mac, and have to buy into the Mac way of doing things. In return, you get a well put together package that is less likely to have you cursing the idiots that wrote the OS. On the hardware side, Apple is a design-led company and effectively you get a more sophisticated result than the vast majority of PCs that can be put together with off the shelf parts by almost anyone with a set of Torx screwdrivers.

Personally I'm happy to fiddle with the internals of PCs and experiment more than many (I'm currently looking to set up a 10 year old Laptop and 1TB external drive combination as an Ubuntu-based File Server) and so I will most likely stick with a PC. If Macs were cheaper I might get one, but then arguably if they were cheaper they wouldn't be Macs....

What I would say is that if you're used to Windows, go and at least have a proper play with a Mac before you buy one - in an Apple Store or elsewhere. Make sure as well that whatever software you want to use is available on Mac, or otherwise budget for a copy of Windows and some time to get it all set up on top of what you're already paying.

for creating artwork & music - mac
for everything else - pc