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An equivalent quality Windows PC will cost nearly the same.
A good point by many before your post Sean but let me ask for sake of continued conversation for real. If taking a look at your statement:At one point this was true...the Apple computers held a serious premium that was not matched by the internals. It hasn't been that way for at least 2 generations. Mac's carry a premium because of several reasons: Design, quality parts, Free OS enhancements and I think above all else, the customer service experience that you can only find from Apple.
When I was looking to pickup a new notebook this past summer, I had it narrowed down to a couple of the Asus and Sony ultrabooks, and the MacBook Air, which were all fairly equivalent. To my surprise, I found the pricing between them all to be quite comparable (I ended up with MBA). When you look it all the offerings available, the price of entry for a Windows PC is indeed less than a Mac by virtue of there being many more configurations available, especially at the low end where Apple doesn't really have a presence. Yes, you can get a $300 Windows notebook, but do you really want an Intel Celeron processor?
An equivalent quality Windows PC will cost nearly the same.