I don't know what you people are complaining about. You get what you pay for.
Their hardware may be relatively expensive, but you also get well-designed software with it (with free OS upgrades)
At work, I work with Windows and Linux OS's (btw, Linux is great), but, at home, I wouldn't swap my retina Macbook Pro with OS X for anything.
I agree, it costs a lot, but you get fantastic build quality, amazing display, PCIe SSD (it's really fast) and ABSOLUTE SILENCE.
I've done some DTP work, edited a video, built malware analysis environment in a VM and I've done all kinds of other things in SILENCE. This thing doesn't make any noise and it's FAST. Oh and IMO the biggest advantage of OS X (other than relatively good security) is stability. In the last 18 months that I've owned it, I only had to reboot it for OS patching. Other than that, there are no reboots needed on OS X. Eat that Windows
After working on this, Windows PC seems frustratingly slow and buggy and vulnerable and all sorts.
Don't get me wrong, I still have my good old noisy Windows desktop for gaming
.
I suppose, there's room for everything. It all depends on your needs and budget.
I've worked on an iMac and Mac Pro (old gen) and would recommend those too for people wanting silence and stability whilst doing their work. You don't need a new one. Get a 2nd hand one off eBay.
Trust me, if you work in IT, the last thing you want at home, is a Windows PC. Many of my colleagues and former co-workers have either Macs or Linux PC's. Windows is good, because it's popular, so games are made for it, so gamers like it. But, other than that, it's a really messy, buggy OS with an ability to degrade itself over time...
It has a lot of holes too, which hackers just love. Drive-by downloads whilst watching those "free" TV shows/films online? Anyone?
I could go on forever comparing Windows, OS X, Linux, iOS, Android and all that. Each of those has their target user. All I can say is try each of those for a good while and then see for yourselves.