Long post ahead.
VirtualMark wrote:
the only real advantage to running a mac is that it makes your wallet less heavy to carry round. i spent just over a grand for my dual monitor, dual hard drive, 8gb fast ram, passive graphics card 5ghz i7 system, which would piss all over ANY mac at the same price point. in fact, it would piss all over a £6000 mac pro.
Here we go. Firstly I already covered pricing by saying its a poor investment from a monetary stance so stop bitching, also you 'top of the range' Mac Pro is due for an update any moment now, so complaining about it being a little old now is like complaining about a new Xbox 360 being overpriced the day before the next-box comes out. Obvious.
Secondly, hardware reliability shits on PC parts, people will rave about build quality all day, but usually we dismiss them and say 'its the same parts inside' Well I'm a system builder, have been since I was 14, (I'm in Uni now) and I'll tell you they have great attention to detail. Is every single part and component in your PC wrapped in breathable film to stop dust from getting into it over time? Does your PC use workstation grade parts (which are far more expensive and reliable than consumer-grade), a 1000watt redundant PSU, a case that will take a vicious attack from the biggest dog you or I know (the Mac Pro case alone is like 13kg or something and solid as fuck). The drivers never falter, I never have to find an install CD except to do a full system reset or install rosetta. This is what I mean by reliability. To me no sound is the same as no system.
VirtualMark wrote:. superior drivers? any proof on this, such as benchmarks? my drivers work just fine as far as i'm concerned. while logic may be seen as an advantage, theres still cubase, ableton, fl studio, pro tools etc that run on the pc, so logic isn't necessary(i do like the look of it tho).
Which brings us to Drivers. CoreAudio is statistically superior to ASIO because it is it's evolution (OS 9 used ASIO). Other than the native multi-audio source support meaning you can actually play youtube whilst producing etc, you can run far more tracks on CoreAudio drivers. You aslo get super low latency by default, tiny buffers (I run usually with 128 samples, 7ms simplex, 13.8ms duplex and can run 35-50 tracks with on average 4 plugs per track on a 2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo Mac Mini 2010, I can give you evidence) I have tested this personally on both my Mac Mini boot-camped and my Quad Core hack, and if you really insist I will fire up the old Ableton and do an example running the same plugs in the same session cross platform when I get the time.
Just to look at why, ASIO is designed to create a direct, bit perfect connection to your sound-card. Your buffer is filled and off you go. CoreAudio submixes before sending to the buffer and contains its own 'soft buffer' as well in memory. This soft buffer allows your cores to be more asymmetric as writing to the soft buffer is not classed as an interrupt, whereas writing the the hard one is. This is why I am able to run more tracks, because the time critical part of any DAW (writing to the Hard buffer) isn't handled by the DAW anymore.
Finally, Hackintosh is a great option if you can't afford a mac, but I had to buy a Mac when it started getting to the point where I needed my Mac to be reliable. Hackintosh is good, but everytime a major update came out or I updated my PC, I would be spending like 2-3 weeks re-kexting, doing my DSDT etc. and thats not good for productivity.
Nowadays, I recommend buying a mac mini, and some aftermarket RAM. Thats what the practical guy would do. Sure you can look at XYZ laptop and say 'oh the Mac is a ripoff', but unless you DJ or are touring you're not buying a Audio machine if buy a Laptop as your main system, its just not a smart thing to do.
(Note: OCing is all well and good, but in a serious environment like the one I work in now, you would be an idiot to even suggest it. It's for people who know what their doing, not people who are asking for advice on a forum, any old slip of the hand on the Vcore and its bye bye CPU.)
PS: With all due respect sir, your name is VirtualMark. I will make the humble suggestion that maybe, like me, you know a lot about PCs, but maybe, unlike me who was forced into the situation, you have never had to adapt to using a Mac and never wanted to because it take all your power and mastery of computing away from you. (You can't mod it, and customization is shite, not to mention there being no root control of daemons aka services so you cant pare down and optimize its footprint like a Windows PC)
) for under £200 lol 
some parts were second hand, also a Buy It Now on ebay for a samsung 35" hdtv £130 (off a stupid chick). last year was an amazing lucky year building such a cheap studio 
it would have friggin cost tha bomb if i tried to iMac myself 