Because it outlasts for you doesn't mean squat. All it is is how much pain you can put up with. We upgrade our PC's because we can and we like speed.
Mac users usually just throw their's away and buy new ones.
Yes, I could have a 7 year old PC still up and running XP if I so choose. But why would I? It's as painful as running a modern day Mac Mini with only 512mb of ram. Probably less slow. Benchmarks show that XP is faster than OSX on the same hardware.
um, my imac actually sped up when i put tiger on it.
it's faster now than it ever was under os 9, which is what it shipped with.
yes, 256mb of ram is nothing.
but that shows you how efficiently these computers run.
i've kept this mac out of necessity, but when i'm finished with it, my brother is going to be using it to write his thesis.
most people with macs that i know of either sell them or give them away when they're done with them, because they just don't die. (well, they do eventually)
my new imac (assuming they keep the 24" in the lineup when they update them) will be my combined computer/television for the next 4 or 5 years.
obscelescence comes on a mac far, far slower than a pc. which is why a mac's specifications are not nearly the whole story.
btw, every benchmark i've ever seen shows os x as outperfoming windows on the same hardware, and has for years. a lot of benchmarks that i'm aware of show mac os x outperforming windows when windows is on better hardware!
certainly, until the cs2/intel debacle (which has been fixed with cs3 anyhow), all the adobe apps perfomed waay better on the mac. that's why about 80% of the design industry use them.