So freakin tired of listening about the cost of Apple computers.
Do you understand that it costs to assemble a computer, to create the software, warranties etc etc.?????
If you cant afford to use a mac, no one is putting a gun to your head and tell you to do so.
Buy a freakin playstation, or whatever.
Sure, a brand new Mac Pro is worth the cash.
But after 2 years, the cost of parts in the Mac Pro go down several hundred dollars.
The Mac Pro price does not reflect this. Even when you want replacement parts, you actually pay more then what the part cost when it was brand new. (excluding the repair service fee).
Of course people are going to turn to the hackintosh scene, provided they don't need Xeons, ECC, and can handle tweaking the system etc.
A friend of mine basically has no OSX system experience, he's a graphics/photoshop dude. Recently he bought a gaming PC with Intel 2600k, GTX 580 etc. I gave him the tip go hackintosh it, as he uses OSX on his Macbook and likes it. He said it was probably too troublesome.
Eventually I persuaded him, and gave him one single link to a brief guide on TonyMac x86. Within a couple of hours he logged back in, "hey, I'm in osx now and everything works great
".
Hackintoshing has really come a long way, it's actually easier to install OSX on a PC (with compatible parts) then it is to install Windows.