This all depends on the platform your looking to hit. If your looking to do mobile, Apple would be best because of the market share. But, XCode is a nightmare. You would have to learn Objective-C and CoaCoa, both of which are garbage language. If you want to make Android, you can use either cuz, it uses java, which is cross platform. If its just scripting, building a machine and installing linux would be most efficient. but, like i said, it depends on what market your aiming at.

It depends on what it is you are wanting to do. I personally am a PC guy, I have looked at the mac's and macbooks / airs at bestbuy and they seem to have pretty much a productive work flow for graphic design and video development.

Microsoft Office is installed and works well on a mac as well as the apple web design software. Further exploring and experimentation resulted in severe confusion and frustation when it came to any serious under the hood code development for webdesign with any of the tools I found preinstalled on the macs at the bestbuy store.

If you are planning to do content development heavily a mac might be a good option as it is pretty much a wyswyg platform. Coming from the PC though I found the Macs rather ummm.. bland might be wrong word but they are more for non technical types that just want to get things done in a visual layout work flow.

If you are a programmer or do a lot of well, ANYTHING PC based then go with a PC.

Personally if I needed a MAC for anything then I would have both Mac's and PC's instead of trying to deal with virtual machines to get sort of a PC environment. Use the tool for the job that you need done.

For me anyway it is not a one or the other situation. I use the tool I need and if it is a Mac then I will get a mac but I am not going to throw out my PC's because I now got a mac. I would do my work in a real windows pc, that needs to be done in that and then use a Mac or Linux or whatever computer for what I need to do in that environment and have both sitting side by side so I can easily switch from one to the other as needed.

Though, that's me and how I operate.

When you say marketing programs.. What exactly do you mean?

Sales letter creation I see no problems with on a mac.

Website visual design layouts I see it rather simple on a mac.

Using specific websites and paying for advertising, CPA, PPC and so on and so forth it doesn't matter what type of computer you have. Same experience on a Linux, Mac, Windows computer. Though IE maybe needed for specific websites out there, I never looked if IE was available on a Mac or not.

Adobe and Microsoft have versions of thier software for Mac's.. Adobe has some that work under Linux as well.

There are less available options for software as a whole for the Mac than Windows but the software that Mac's do have from what I have seen work in a way that make you more productive from a strictly ease of use stand point.

From a programming stand point, I have no clue because I couldn't really get into any code development on any serious level on the floor models at bestbuy. I did not like the limited code access their webdesign software gave you though and is mainly designed as a visual layout editor but i am sure there are other software thast gives you same experience as I do on a PC.

I own Macs, Linux and Windows PCs, I use each for a different purpose, I use Linux as my main machine to do my web programming and website management on it.

I use my Macs for a secure day to day work and video editing...

I only use windows when I have to since Windows is really not secure, I'd not do any online shopping, banking, or anything important on windows at all... not even email...

because I am a programmer I know how vulnerable a windows PC can be.

But for the most part I could not be happier with my Mac machines, I can find all the software I need on them and they work perfectly, with Linux I have to fix things and rely on community when I need help but that's what I like (hacker spirit).

Get a Mac, don't even hesitate... they are awesome.

Sarge,

I've always been a hard-core PC guy... hell, I've been writing Windows software for a living for 12 years. I bought myself an iMac in 2008 - I figured I'd do my coding on my PC and do graphics work and videos on the Mac... until I saw an employee running Windows Vista on a virtual machine in his Mac.

I installed Parallels, and it gave me the option to create a new virtual machine based on my existing PC. I did that, it sucked ALL of my PC into the virtual machine - a ghost of the entire hard drive, with all of my IM ebooks, software, Visual Studio.. everything.

I transferred my Windows license to the virtual machine, turned off my old PC, and it's been sitting in a closet for almost 4 years now. I do all of my Windows programming on my Mac, along with all the "creative stuff" I originally got it for. I've bought dozens of "windows-only" internet marketing products, installed them to my Mac running Parallels, and NEVER had a single problem with any of them.

So no, you won't be limited with marketing programs- just be sure to get either Parallels or VMWare. You'll never look back.

I use a Mac for everything from programming to using IM software - If you need to use something that needs 'Windows', just install windows within a free VM environment such as VirtualBox.

The gestures you can do with a mac and the general desktop environment has made my life a lot easier when coding websites etc.

I'm a MAC guy but I do have to say that for cost/ processor reason PC would be cheaper but I love my mac and it performs well enough without any crashed like most pc..

If you have the money just get everything, a Linux machine for web development, banking, PHP, and secure stuff, a nice Mac for screen capture/ video editing/ Music/ Art, etc.. and a Windows PC for all the junk software that only works on Windows