No offense to the above poster, but I've NEVER heard good things about the Canon ZR line. I owned one of the first, the ZR10, so I speak from experience. The ZR line is terrible in normal indoor lighting. They call this "low light" capability but this does not mean darkness or night shooting. This is normal household lighting in the evening.
I go back and look at video I took of my newborn son and it is almost unwatchable. The video suffered from excessive grain and noise.
Sony's Handycams do much better in low light. The 2003 lineup of TRV19/22/33 were very good and the 2004 HC20/30/40 are pretty good also. I upgraded to a Sony TRV22 and there was a huge difference in indoor video quality.
The middle-tier Canons like the Elura and Optura are better than the Canon ZRs.
Panasonic is getting very good reviews for their consumer 3CCD cams. Check out the GS120. Only negative on this cam is that the image stabiliaztion is not very good above 5x zoom.
Sony's do most things well, but they don't do anything outstanding. Good image quality, very good stabilzation and night shot.
If you want to edit the footage on your Mac then do not buy a DVD-based camcorder. There are many head-aches in getting this video onto your Mac to be edited. Plus, you are paying much more for the same video quality, same optics, etc. You are paying for the convience of recording to DVD. This is great for grandparents or soccer moms. If you want to edit in iMovie or Final Cut get a MiniDV cam.
Stick with Sony, Panny or Canon (non-ZR) and you'll be fine. Buy from a good dealer where you can return it. Take video in a bunch of different settings/lighting and make sure that you get good quality video by checking thru your TV--don't use the LCD or your computer to judge the video qualtiy.