The general idea I got from the Apple fanboy congregation is that their hardware is supposed to be better, all is supposed to work better because it's from one supplier and that the operating system is a lot more advanced and prettier to look at.
Well, what I think is the following: The hardware is, as another poster already mentioned, PC hardware with nearly no differences at all, except that it has a higher price and sometimes is older than on the less restricted PC hardware market. The less powerful iMacs cost more than substantially more powerful PC systems from Dell and so on and suck for gamers due to the graphics cards used or even permanently integrated there. The more powerful Macs, Mac Pros or however they call their high-end systems, are competitively priced when compared to workstation, thus very powerful, PC systems and suck for gaming because of the graphics cards used. To install Windows on any Mac isn't fun for any gamer and the choices for graphics cards from Apple is lousy in this segment. Other powerful graphics card solutions seem to have the frequency of acorns in the wild. When Eric doesn't game, it's fine. It will, however, not change the heavy price differences for the rest he will need to do video editing and so on. Fast video editing solutions will have need of fast storage access, maybe in RAID 0, a lot of RAM and a fast CPU. Optimized professional programs like Sony Vegas, which use more features and cores of modern CPUs, will do a better job than any family video trash program.
All-in-one solutions exist on the Windows side as well and are offered by Dell and such. To stay away from some styled up cripple system seems to be a good general idea; to pay for power, not for some marketing-generated bubble to be one of the few who know what computing is all about. It can save a lot of money.
No one without a business and who really has to pay for the original versions buys Windows software when there's the alternative to use cracked versions for about nothing. To scan them with a free antivirus software is basic procedure. Paid antivirus programs don't necessarily do a better job than the free ones. They all have their weak spots. And although Apple might have fewer problems with viruses, they exist on their platform also. It's a myth that any system without the least amount of care and configuration will be flawless. On any platform.
Anyone able will benefit from avoiding pre-installed, badly-configured operating systems and doing a fresh installation with everything needed. It will usually avoid a lot of problems. People can be paid to do that.
The look of the Mac OS X and Windows Vista or Windows 7 operating systems shouldn't be too important for those who want to get work done and not just look at their shiny new toy.
Every church milks its members, PC manufacturers and Apple included.