1. Beauty: Anyone who says that what a computer looks like is not important uses a PC. PC's are ugly, face it, no matter what they do to them they are just plain ugly. The possible exception to this would be Sony (some of theirs are nice) & the specialty companies like Voodoo & Alien-ware. The Mac's used to be housed in dull boxes, until the birth of the G3 in the cool White/Blue translucent case. Then came a slew of multi colored iMac's & iBooks, then they changed to bright white, aluminum & titanium. Now the iMac’s are a cool all in one display, the Mac Pro is housed in an awesome aluminum case & the Mac Books are high gloss white or an aluminum chassis. Even the Apple mouse is cool; it is solid white (no buttons are visible) with a tiny scroll ball. When you click a button or move the ball & a speaker in the mouse makes the sounds. Cool!
2. Usability: This is the most important function of any computer, does it do what I need it to? I was really surprised at how easy it was to use a Mac. I was worried at first that there would be a steep learning curve (even for my computer literate mind), as there was such a different look in the interfaces. Mac has no start menu & no task bar, which are pretty useful items. Mac mice also don't have a right button, although the system will support a dual button mouse which is a really handy item. But after a few days getting myself accustom to the OS-X Aqua interface, I found it was much easier to accomplish my day to day tasks. I also found that I no longer "tinkered" with the system like I did on Windows. I am now doing more creative tasks on my Mac than I did on my PC. It’s very easy.
3. Performance: Ok even before I switched I was always on the "left" side of the PC spectrum. Everyone was buying Intel, I used AMD, the processors just ran more efficiently (get over it Intel fans). I used open source software: Open Office, Firefox, Firebird, the Gimp, and had all but switched to Linux (I feel all of these perform far better than their commercial counterparts). So, Microsoft was almost out the door anyway, I only had one PC that didn't run Linux. I knew from experience that Linux (based on Unix) ran more reliably than Windows ever did. My first Linux PC ran for over 5 months without crashing or being restarted, I can't keep a Windows system going for 5 days! Anyone who says Mac's or Linux PC's never have a problem is lying. Any modern PC is bound to have some sort of glitch once in a while, they are far too complex not to. But with Macs (& Linux) the chances of an unrecoverable error, needing a reboot, are very slim. I have not experienced on any of my Mac's yet.
As for speed: My first mac mini (1.25 GHz G4) ran applications on par with my old PC (AMD Athlon 1.83 Ghz, windows) at least i don't notice any discernible difference. I can have iTunes, iPhoto, iWeb, chat, & web browser all going at the same time with no slowdowns at all. I have also run Quake 4 ( a processing ball-buster) & it ran just fine. Now with the Intel core 2 machines things are better than ever.
4. Compatibility: This was a HUGE issue for me. You always hear that Mac's are incompatible with everything. That there is not much software available for them. That you have to buy special hardware. this is just not true, an in some cases is the opposite.
First I'll address the hardware issue. I plugged my Panasonic camera in my mac, it imported the pictures into iPhoto for me. I plugged in my Video camera & iMovie switched to the capture mode & even let me control the camera the the mouse. I plug in a jump drive & it shows the files, hook up a media card reader & it reads it, my laptop installed a printer that was hooked up to my network in the bedroom, automatically. Ever have Windows help you like that? Me neither, I usually needed a driver install of some sort. I plugged in my Playstation Portable to my 3 year old iBook (built long before the the Portable) & it read it just fine.
Next I move on to software. There isn't as much software available for the Mac as the PC, that is a fact. But here is another fact, most of the PC software is crap. Do you really need 20 different web browsers? 100+ Email programs? Dozens of anti virus programs? Thousands of free-ware games? And countless business programs? The most likely things you need are: web browser, email program, photo organizer/editor, media player/organizer, document editor, chat program, file manager & possibly a news reader. A new Mac has all of that plus an awesome video editor, music editor, & DVD creator. The only extra software i would recommend with a Mac (with iLife) is Open Office [free] for MS compatible document/spreadsheet editing, Handspring [free] for easy DVD ripping & conversion, Limewire [free] for file-sharing & the Gimp [free] an amazing photo/graphics editing & drawing program. There, if you bought all of this retail: the Mac way $188, the Microsoft way $350-450 for software only.
NOTE: I have downloaded the iWork ’09 free trial & I love it! It is so much easier to use than Office, I just can’t believe it. I want to know how the Apple office suite (word processor, spreadsheet, presentations) works better than the Microsoft version & costs $200 less. Why is that???
5. Security: No contest at all! Unix was designed to be used on networks. It was built from the ground up to have security features on the network. Windows was not even built (originally) with networking features, these things were added in later. Consequentially is has always been plagued with security "holes" that can leave it open for attacks. Mac & Linux are both based on Unix & therefore are less prone to security issues.
There are about 60,000+ known viruses for Windows, 40 or so for the Macintosh, and about 40 for Linux. One of the reasons hackers are not as likely to write viruses for Mac's or Linux machines is the way they deal with executable software (the way viruses are spread). In windows all you need to do to run an executable is click it, sometimes it will actually run on it's own. In Linux you would need to download the file, assign it executable permissions using your root password, & then run it. On a Mac system you would be told the file your downloading contains an installer or executable, have to click yes, download it, run it, then type in your password to install it. So you are a lot less likely to run a virus on a Mac or Linux system than Windows (unless you are a moron).
Mac also has built in POP-UP blocking & Email filtering that is the best I have ever used.
No computer system will always be 100% safe, but the Unix based (Mac, Linux, Unix, BSD) are the best we have so far.
