A person of average intelligence can build a computer. And maintain their own car, and do many other things we often pay others to do. Time actually is worth something.
MAC's aren't merely old tech, they are dead tech.
You really have no idea what you are talking about. Compare the PowerPC 970 to the Pentium 4 and tell me which one is modern technology and which is a collection of hacks to support an ancient architecture originally designed for 8-bit microcontrollers.
Do a bunch of new program installs and uninstalls without a cleanup and defrag and see if you don't get some lockups, primarily if you run games.
Been doing that on my Macs for years. The answer is no.
MAC's are about 4 times the cost to get equal value.
Please enlighten us as to where to get the equivalent of a dual-processor G5 for $500, the equivalent of an iBook for $250, or the equivalent of a Mac mini for $125.
By the way, it's "Mac", not an acronym.
I didn't "cap" for reasons of being an acronym.
Does SSE or MX technology ring a bell?
The so called advancement only becomes such if the applications are coded to take advantage of the chip design. Most of the stuff becomes sales hype and has no relationship to improving applications on the street. MAC is historic for such lab testing that resulted in little street synergy.
They are not alone:
MX virtually came and went without such coding being put in use.
Even SSE and SSE 2 are more sales gimmicks than reality.
So, what is on the street? It is not some hyped up Steve "Jobsean" boardroom blather.
Show me the tech on the street.
Then show me the pricepoint.
Considering that the MAC processors must be used in the Apple rigs, their actual value for street use is limited.
Best bang for the buck today is the:
Pent 4 2.4c
$162.00
I get 3.3gig from my 2.8c, but others have reached 3.4 and 3.5gig on the 2.4c with only air cooling.
I am not sure where you are coming from in using the term hacks.