Just about any USB or Firewire peripheral will work on a Mac just by plugging it in.
And that's the real strength of the Mac IMHO. Straight out of the box I plugged my Sony Mini-DV dvr into the Mac via firewire and the Mac instantly recognized it, started iMovie, and let me easily import the movie I had taped.
I had the same success for my Fuji camera, which was instantly recognized by the Mac.
In the PC world I had to install custom software and drivers for both, work out the bugs (especially with the Fuji), and then use two programs that couldn't talk to one another.
With iLife I can easily create a DVD of my home movies using a professional quality theme, insert a slide show into the title screen using my still photos, and even add a complete slide show as a menu option from within the DVD. I've never seen a suite of PC apps that gave you as much as iLife, and iLife is free with all Macs.