everytuesday wrote:As for the PC route, yes its cheaper. Yes it can be more performant, but its windows. I always have issues with Windows machines. I grew up building PC's and its just a lot of tinkering with hardware/drivers.
Most "issues with windows" lie between the PC and the chair.
Windows is about as hands-on as macOS, these days...
If you're building PCs with disparate parts, then of course it's going to be a lot of tinkering with Hardware and Drivers. What do you think building a PC entails? Fitting Legos together? That is not the ordinary experience of a person who buys a PC. Most people buy pre-assembled PCs, and generally things like driver maintenance are automated (esp. now that most vendor drivers are updated via Windows Update, and the Control Software has been put on the Windows Store).
You can't build a Mac, per se (discounting Hackintosh), so there really isn't any comparative benchmark. The only thing comparable is a Linux PC, and that's indistinguishable from a Windows PC in all ways except the OS and the software running on it... and I don't think anyone can claim that Linux is less PC maintenance than Windows.
And even if you could "build" a Mac, you have to weigh the freedom to use a greater variety of hardware in a Windows system vs. the very limited hardware support in macOS - comparatively speaking. For example, there was a point in time when only certain brands of SSDs supported TRIM in macOS, so, you had to cherry pick what brand you bought if you wanted to update a MacBook HDD with a SATA SSD.
Many people simply prefer macOS as an operating platform to Windows 10. That's really the only legitimate difference between the two - beyond comparing the quality of hardware coming out of various OEMs to Apple's systems...
For me, they are literally interchangeable. I don't really care which OS I use, so it comes down to cost and value proposition. The reason I stopped buying Macs is because they are bad value for the dollar and a pad long term investment due to limited upgrade options. I don't like being forced to pay huge overages for specs I may or may not need simply to guard against the possibility that I may need it later, but not have the capability to add it myself (RAM, Storage) - on top of the limited GPU options.
I also don't want any AIO machines, and I don't see a point in buy a Mac Pro when I can buy or build a perfectly usable AMD desktop system for far less cost.