I got a mac before discovering band in a box. I primarily use Logic and Guitar Rig for recording and playing and largely have no complaints. I used to use GarageBand and still do sometimes - it's a fantastic app and comes with every mac. (I won't exactly say it's free because it's really included in the purchase price.)

My decision for buying a mac was based on the ability to be platform-agnostic. I can use Parallels or vmWare and run basically any windows app right next to my mac apps. (Or Linux, or BSD, or Plan 9, or vxWorks, whatever.)

It is a little disappointing that the mac version is behind the windows version, but I've not really scratched the surface with what can be done with the 2010 mac version, so I don't have much of a leg to stand on there.

Macs are more expensive. I'm not going to go into how much bundled software like GarageBand, iMovie, iDVD, etc is worth - you'd have to buy some of that stuff on a windows machine to equal the mac. Would that make up the difference? I've never run the numbers.

In my experience, with that extra money you're buying name and reliability. My mac machines have outlasted my windows machines in reliability and usefulness. My 3+ year old iMac is still plenty fast and useful. After 3 years, my PC desktop was getting a bit pokey. My mac laptop is rock-solid and the fit and finish are far above my dell or IBM laptops. But as a previous poster mentioned, it's like fighting over tools - my screwdriver is better than that one, etc - at the end of the day, it's a screwdriver...

My $0.02.

-Hollister