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But you can easily spend another $150-$250 on antivirus/antimalware/firewall software over the 3-4 years you own the machine.

Not for PCs. There are numerous very good (in some cases better than paid versions) and totally free for home use antivirus, antispyware, and firewall programs available for XP, and many of them are already Vista-compatible. Interestingly, a quick search indicates your statement is true for Macs; a brief search of Google and Download.com found very, very few such programs for Macs and all required paid registration. It looks like you're in for about $110 to get just one antivirus, antispyware, and firewall program, but I don't know whether they have to be renewed annually for updates. I also don't claim that there are no such free programs, just that the basic searches that I did (similar to what I would do if I were actually setting up a Mac) found none.

I'm not sure why a premium price for a fully integrated experience is so bad for computers

Time is an important part of the value equation. The problem with most pro-Mac articles is that they so grossly exaggerate the negative experiences everyone supposedly has on PCs that they lose all credibility. They also ignore the huge time costs of converting to and learning an entirely new operating system from the one that 95% of people have used for many years.

I'm aware of the free security stuff for XP. I normally put Spybot S&D and AVG Antivirus on all the machines I work on. They're not perfect but they're plenty good. Generally, if people have problems after that, it's because they're doing dangerous things with IM or cruising pron/warez sites or opening macro-ed Office documents or doing stupid thing with email.

The reason why the Mac AV stuff is so pricey is that no one wants it.

You saw the same thing with Norton Antivirus for Palm. There never was a need for it to begin with.

They also ignore the huge time costs of converting to and learning an entirely new operating system from the one that 95% of people have used for many years.

I've yet to see anyone who has taken more than a month to become quite happy with the Mac experience. The learning curve is probably less than switching from current MS Office to Office 2007. Maybe half of the switchers actually find that their productivity goes way up because the Mac's developers focus on ease-of-use and staying out of your way. They don't wizard everything up the wazoo like MS, they make the common tasks very very easy. The integrated approach to documents (photos, music, video, etc.) works very well and requires almost no developer effort.

Interestingly, a quick search indicates your statement is true for Macs; a brief search of Google and Download.com found very, very few such programs for Macs and all required paid registration.

If, for some unknown reason, a Mac user desired to run anti-virus software on his Mac, there are a couple of FREE ways to do so.

ClamXav for OS X.
Agax for OS 7-9.

Since as the author of Agax puts it

"There have as yet been no credible viruses for Mac OS X. If this situation were to change, and a free Mac antivirus program again became beneficial, then I would probably write a whole new program rather than trying to port or update Agax."

It hasn't, so he hasn't.