I use a PC at work and a Mac at home. My work computer is a relatively new Dell Latitude E6430 with an SSD inside. My Mac is a 15 inch late 2011 15 in hires antiglare Macbook Pro. At work, our IT department keeps things pretty locked down and there is some astoundingly low quality software we are required to use. It is that software more than Windows itself that makes the machine a chore to use and I'm not willing to take on the responsibility of bending the IT rules to make my experience any better. At the end of the work day I switch the thing off and thank GOD I have a Mac waiting for me at home. At home I'm my IT department and I have little or nothing to do.
Yes, you heard that right. I have little or no IT to do at home. I started my transition to Mac in 1998 when I took my home server off of Win NT 3.51 and moved it to Linux. While my NT box froze or rebooted about once a day, my Linux box rebooted only for major power failures. It was always always always ready and always always always worked. In 2005 I got a Mac mini because at $500, it seemed to me to finally give me a chance to try OSX without spending "too much." The rest is history. Over the years my IT workload has declined steadily as I discarded Windows boxes and replaced them with Macs. No more "Dad, I can't print!" No more "Dad, the internet is down!" No more antivirus subscription popups that seem worse than the viruses they allegedly prevent!
So when you hear people complaining about Macs, most often they are ignorant. Sure you can get some astoundingly fast CPU with giga-tera-bytes of memory and quadra-giga-terabytes of storage for 50 cents when you build your own PC. Then you are faced with putting Windows on the thing. Based on my experience, that's a lot like smearing dog poop on a Lamborghini.
OSX was inherently superior to Windows 95, 98, Me, 2000, XP and Vista. Even most PC fanboys will not argue with this. Starting with Windows 7, Microsoft started to close the gap when they started finding and fixing bugs in Windows and its drivers using automated test tools. Windows 8 is a huge step backwards to some, a step forward to others. If stability is what you care about, along with the ability to share files with everyone else, and you don't mind spending some time doing your own "maintenance" Windows is a virtual tie. If your TIME is important to you, Apple is ready to sell some of it back to you for the price of a Macbook Pro. If you leave system preferences set to "app store" or even "app store and known developers" you are likely to never again witness an app crash or freeze. Ever.
So in summary, while Windows has gotten a lot better, OSX still has a distinct edge in terms of usability, stability and its curated app store. The only reason I would choose Windows these days is if I had to use it for compatibility with other Windows users. And btw, this is less an issue now than ever as almost every OSX app can read and write Windows app file formats and there are low cost and freeware alternatives that are better than Microsoft Office in many ways and almost as good in others. Another factor to consider is you can run Windows inside a Virtualbox, Parallels or even as the only OS running by using bootcamp. There is no such (official) option if you have a PC. I have a friend who had an iMac and felt that Macs were "too expensive" so he went over to one of the Hackintosh sites, bought the exact hardware listed in one of the "proven" configs and could not get OSX to run properly. He has since given up and installed Win 7.
There is definitely something to the argument that Macs are more expensive. I saw a very nice Lenovo ultrabook in Office Depot a few months back for around $600. It came with Windows 8 and included a nice touchpad (though not as nice as Apple), and a touchscreen (which you can't get these days on an Apple computer other than iPad). It was very nice and strongly reminded me of the Macbook and Macbook Air line. If I was in the market for a PC, Lenovo would definitely be on my short list. But there is more to the story (for me). While a Macbook Pro would cost almost double what that nice Lenovo ultrabook cost, I would gladly pay it because I find it to be worth it. One calculation is total cost of ownership. Another is ownership experience. Yet another is customer service reputation of Apple versus Microsoft, Samsung, Lenovo, Dell, et al. There is no contest, you get a better "end to end" experience in the Apple ecosystem and to me it's worth paying a little more. The clincher is this: I used to replace my PCs every 18 months. What did it matter if I shelled out $600 every 18 months when I could shell out $1200 every five to seven YEARS on a Mac. My MBP cost close to $2K including Applecare. By buying "last year's" model at Microcenter, I got it new in box for less than what Apple refurb store was selling the same model at the time. To me this is the best way to reduce the cost of Apple gear: buy refurbished or clearance and keep it a long time.
