For many years Bill Gates and Microsoft ruled the roost. As time progressed Microsoft and the quality of the products they produced began to head downhill. We have both PC and Mac machines.
The quantity of $$ spent has no bearing on the quality of a PC. It is a total crap-shoot. The last PC which was a very expensive high end machine has had virtually every component within it's case replaced at least once and some multiple times. This machine is now about 5-years old. This machine has been the most unreliable piece of junk we have ever owned. Without support we still have an old windows 98 machine that is still working though it has been in an "iron lung" for years. Windows 7 is a great improvement over previous programs, but, again Microsoft instead of reliability has had a history of creating something marginal then patching it into oblivion. With each "patch" it becomes increasingly unstable and unreliable.
The Mac Pro is headed towards a year old. It has never frozen, it has never lost files, it has performed flawlessly. It's main disadvantages lie in it's slightly different operating system. In a PC an operation may take one keystroke and with the Mac the same exact operation may take three. The Mac is however much faster on the Internet and the Mac is measurably faster with both machines operating at the same connection speed.
Just as a point of note: I opted for an LED based monitor. I very strongly recommend this. The resolution and brightness on this is absolutely incredible when placed next to an LCD based screen of only a couple of years ago.
I am not in love with Apple as a Company, but, they are going gangbusters simply because the product they produce is of higher quality and higher reliability.
I cannot speak for their phone/pad products, but for their computers the difference is obvious. It's like the old motto Packard had: "Ask the man who owns one!"
