So while I think a Mac is a viable alternative to windows, Ive seen nothing that can answer my question - why are they so expensive ?

Because apple can get away with charging those prices.

Mixture of things I guess - part of it is obviously the design/branding in itself. Apple does invest a lot in product design, they spend a lot more money than most simply making sure the product looks and feels good. Some windows based laptop manufacturers will just get a generic looking case and fit the components in - if you just want something that does the job has xyz components then obviously dont go for the mac. Same reason some people may pay more for jeans from diesel and turn their nose up at jeans from primark they either like the design or are suckers for brand names or maybe a bit of both.

A few girls I know who own macs do so because theyre adamant that everyone knows macs are better than PCs so Id say there are a significant number of mac users who have simply fallen for apples marketing and/or macs reputation as a stable platform from the days when windows wasnt always that great has stuck somewhat.

Macs used to have a big edge when it came to anything involving graphics - although this edge is pretty much non-existant these days a lot of people in the supposedly creative industries have been using macs for years and continue to do so.

Theyre not as expensive as everyone makes out really - sure you can get some very cheap windows laptops etc.. but if you were to spec up a similar high spec dell you wouldnt have a huge gap in price. I know plenty of people who own macs - for some people if youre going to spend a grand or so on a laptop then dropping a couple hundred extra to get a mac isnt a big deal. Apple customer service pretty much beats anyone else too. I ordered the wrong display port cable for my mac - my mistake, phoned up expecting to have to RMA it etc.. they just sent me the correct one for free.

Apple does have a bit of a lock on OSX - if you like OSX youre forced (in most cases) to buy a mac - obviously some people will go down the hackintosh route but youre talking about a a very small minority of computer geeks.

Theyre a quality, albeit slightly overpriced, product - Ive got a reasonable amount of disposable income so Im happy to pay a premium ad get a mac for my general home computer type stuff.

Apple customer service pretty much beats anyone else too. I ordered the wrong display port cable for my mac - my mistake, phoned up expecting to have to RMA it etc.. they just sent me the correct one for free.

It wasnt that long ago, around christmas, that Apple was having a major issues with their 27" Imac displays, from cracked screens to yellow lines and such, and from reading several sites like Gizmodo / CNET / Appleinsider etc etc it seem to be a worldwide issue, and from what i read was not being dealt with in usual Apple Customer Service fashion.

You can do a google search now and find plenty of websites reporting on the matter, and plenty of user comments by hundreds (thousands) of unhappy customers all moaning about how it was being dealt with. I remember now that people were being told different causes for the issues, and Apple stores were not admitting any liability for damaged screens even though 100s reported their Macs arrived without any damage to packaging.

Im not trying to bash them, i just say it how i read it, it went on for weeks and had a lot of coverage.

So the windows one is better. Thats twice youve posted up images to support macs, but twice theyve just blatantly make windows look better.

Are you really a windows user

Tried it for 6 months and didnt like it, it seems they do everything opposite to MS, didnt seem very user friendly to me.

Quote from: Goblin

I was asking how it looked "Fisher Price". The two are practically identical (except for useless chrome effects in the Windows one).

One thing that annoys me is that I have to go to the menu bar to get the location in text (ie, I often want to copy n paste the directory path).

I do ALT+D then Control+C. Probs a ~1s operation...

i still cant get flash working in firefox on my up to date ubuntu laptop.Ive always had problems with ubuntu. PITA.

the mac does me well although coming to mac from windows in much the same way as sam, i have exactly the same windows mgmt issues. spaces is an awesome addition though, i wont use windows again til it does that.

bet someone knows an add on for windows that does it now. lol.

Inception...3x faster