Explain to me why I was getting the hour glass waiting to load 'My Computer' on a straight out of the box Dell laptop then? Why did it take 20 odd minutes to install Office, over the 2-3 minutes on my Mac? The SSD will make some difference, but not that much difference...
I reinstalled Office 365 on my PC the other day (needed to go from 32 to 64-bit version) and it took less than 5 minutes to be usable; it streams features from the net, on demand. Clever stuff.
Old-fashioned spinning disk, too.
Where a Mac can
really kick you in the goolies is out-of-warranty repairs. I've had (and enjoyed, a lot) two iMacs - a 24" white Core 2 and a 27" aluminium i5. Both needed replacement optical drives, GPUs and screens. I coughed up the extra for AppleCare, and it's just as well that I did; the replacement panel for the i5 was on the info-only invoice at £600. GPUs ran to £300ish each, optical drives a ton. By comparison, You can get the
exact same panel in a desktop Dell monitor for £400ish, and that's with all the gubbins that makes a panel into a monitor, too. I can get another GTX660 (ha! can't do THAT in an iMac!) for £150ish. Replacement DVD/BR drive: £30-50.
tl;dr: Apple spares prices are larcenous.
This next bit is about desktop Macs , and specifically iMacs.
If you're operating over the 3 year cycle and you buy AppleCare, an iMac is low-risk. You're giving away a lot of performance to an equivalent-price PC, but you're getting a nicer, quieter enclosure, a guaranteed high-quality display, and a highly integrated and polished end-to-end user experience.
You will not be able to add additional internal storage, your optical drive will be external, if you want another network port then you're into Heath Robinson solutions, your graphics card will be at best a mediocre mobile version and you won't be able to upgrade it, your CPU is the one you're stuck with for the life of the computer, and if
anything breaks (other than the keyboard or mouse) you're pretty much stuck with sending it back to the shop - computers that are held together with glue are difficult to service on a good day.
It's a question of deciding what the priorities are. If you value a handsome all-in-one system that has minimal wires and everything looks and feels good, then an iMac is a no-brainer,
if you buy the AppleCare and are happy to move it on after 3 years. You can get reasonable-looking all-in-one PCs, but there's literally nothing that's
as good looking as an iMac.
If you don't care what it looks like, or you want to be able to upgrade it or service it yourself, or you're looking for the best performance for your money, then a PC is what you want.
Because Photoshop and Lightroom are pretty much identical on OS X and Windows.