I've long hated the Mac Vs. PC debate. Anybody who brings it up immediately gets filed into one of my mental boxes. This box is lonely, and is filled with other closed minded individuals. I throw a lot of bigots and repeat DUI offenders into that box.
The debate is superfluous for one reason : All computers, by design, do the same thing. Just like cars. all vehicles, in fact, do the exact same thing. They are designed to have one pilot, be easy to operate, and carry loads of various weight. Of course, the weight of those loads and the speed at which they carry result in greatly different designs of the vehicle. An 18 wheeler is the same in function as a Mazda MX6 or even, a Ferrari. The weight bearing characteristics and the speed at which they carry those loads may be vastly different, but they do the same thing: They carry something from point A to point B by an operator. The Ferrari might be more fun to drive for some, but in principal, it is the same as the 18 wheeler. Before you say “Hey, Ferrari's get the girl,” Remember, somebody wrote a song about how “She thinks my tractor is sexy.”
Now, computers are operate on the same metaphor. They are designed to carry out millions of mathematical operations to mull over vast amounts of data and produce some output for a human to glee over. In some cases, that data is nothing more than building a virtual world in which one can play a game. In some cases, and data is there to run a business or crunch numbers in a database. In essence, any computer can perform these functions, Mac, PC; any computer.
How they perform these functions is what is at the heart of the Mac Vs. PC (Vs. Linux) debate.
Until recently, I've been baffled at how this debate has maintained itself over the years. It just doesn't make any sense to me. A Mac is not the same as a PC, and neither are the same as Linux (when comparing Operating systems, mind you). The hardware is comparable between them. They age into obscurity just about as quickly. They are equally as prone to damage by incidental damage (be it virus or physical / data damage). The Graphical interfaces, although different, are basically the same. They each require about as much intrinsic computer knowledge to effectively use them.
Why then is this debate so intrenched? The answer is amazing simple:
Apple products, on the whole, cost vastly more money than do their competitors.
Baba Shiv recently performed an experiment at Stanford University. He found that people that spent more money on a Sobe energy drink performed better on a performance test. The drinks were given to two sets of subjects. One group got the drinks for a sale price, and were told this, while the other group paid full price, and were told this as well.
When performing their performance tests, the group that paid full price performed 30 percent more work than those that got the same drink on sale. The high priced group expected more since they paid more. Those that were told it was cheaper thought that the drink had less quality. Conversely, those that were told that it was regular price thought it had high quality, and thus, performed better. They continued to get the same results test after test with different subjects.
The Human brain actually fools a person in to believing that a higher priced object has higher intrinsic value. This has been reproduced by giving people wines in different price groups. Regardless of the actual cost or actual quality of the wine (when the bottles where switched to label the cheap wine as very expensive wine), wines labeled as expensive consistently scored higher than cheap labeled wine.
So, when a Mac person tells you how wonderful their Mac is (or the wine snob tells you about their recent 'find' of a $50 bottle of wine), smile and know the real reason they love it so much : They spent a lot of money on it.
As for me, I'll go back to my $400 EEEpc and my $29 (5GB) MP3 player and enjoy the money saved on a vacation.