I've used both, but my exposure to Macs is fairly limited compared to many years of not only being a pc enthusiast/hardware/gaming geek etc ...but also working with Microsoft systems.
However, I prefer the pc to be perfectly honest. I do think as a general system to pickup and use OSX is nicer than Windows of any sort, I really do think it's a nice system. But, the real killer for me is that 'out of the box' approach with Macs, I love to fiddle, I love to take stuff apart ...I love having the lid off tweaking this and that, I actually 'like' playing with memory timings in the BIOS just to get to that next level of overclock, seriously, it is a hobby for me as with many here. And to coin a phrase used by someone else earlier in the thread "I like tweaking my Nvidia settings"
I feel like I have a level of freedom with a pc setup that I just don't with Macs, I feel restricted and quite ...tied into what Apple wants with a Mac setup. I like OSX ...and I think the Macbook Pro looks great ....but they do not satisfy my geeky side I'm afraid.
However, as a laptop, which are not particularly customisable anyway, I really can see the appeal of the Mac, not so much for a desktop though. My desktop is my hobby machine really, not so much my laptop, due to the nature of them.
Having said that, when I bought my HP 8710P laptop (a £1400 laptop) in January, I did look seriously at the Macbook pro, but I could not quite match the specs (as I wanted them) for the same cost, and the HP business machines are as well built as a Macbook Pro all in all I'd say, they just don't have the same ultra-modern 'Ikeaesque' looks (I like how the HP looks, but then I'm weird, I admit). The main killer in the deal for me was the graphics card, I could match everything else just fine. The HP has an Nvidia Quadro NVS 320, which in common terms, is basically an 8700GT, this is significantly faster than the 8600GT that the Macbook Pro comes with, at the time a top spec Macbook Pro had very similar specs to my HP, but had a less powerful graphics card, however, the price of the Mac at this point was getting rather too far away from the pc to be fair.
Also, I specifically wanted a 17" display with a 1680x1050 resolution. HP give you a choice ranging from 1440x900 at this size panel up to 1920x1200. Apple can match this exact panel size and resolution, great, that's good, but the Macbook Pro with that screen was coming in at over £1800, now £400 more than my HP and with a less powerful GPU, which really, really did matter to me, as I use this machine as a gaming machine when I'm away from home for up to 3 weeks at a time some times. It serves as my portable desktop replacement basically. The Mac couldn't quite come up with the goods, although it would have been so very, very close had the price not been so high.
Because the Macbook Pro can run Windows of course, if the Apple had been the same price as the HP machine, or preferably slightly cheaper with the lower powered GPU, I may have just gone for it anyway and accepted the slower 8600GT M GPU, but at £400 more expensive for less than I wanted, no way.
Sorry for rambling on, but without entering into silly generalisations one way or another, as an enthusiast and I suppose what people would term as a pretty extreme power user in many respects, this is why I don't use an Apple.
I could for a laptop though, I really could and I would, but the price was just too much for too little comparatively. I don't have any of the 'problems' I hear people mention with Windows, then again I know exactly what I'm doing to be fair, and how to configure it all properly and to tweak it etc, I'm also quite prepared to do that, it's a none-issue to me, part of pc ownership really, I have always done it and indeed expect to have to.
Appologies for rambling on for so long.
