With 2 firewire ports and 4 USB ports you can add literally hundreds of items to an iMac. As for being proprietarty, I don't know what you are talking about. MacOS X has an "Open Source" core called Darwin that anyone on the web can download the source code. You can't do that with Windows XP. There is not one chance in hell that Bill Gates will let you read the source code for the core of Windows XP.
At $1,200, an iMac is cheap compared to buying a base PC and adding all the features that the iMac supports such as firewire, Nvidia graphics card, 15" LCD, dual monitor support, 60 gig HD, 384MB Ram (can't find one with 128Mb to buy -- all the stores give you 256MB with purchase for free), etc.
You guys can argue with some justification that Macs are easy to use and are certainly more reliable than Windows 95, a 7 year old OS that certainly needed improvement.
But when you get into price, you are lost. The might 256 MB of SDRAM has a retail value of $40, less if you shop. It's also obsolete. PCs are running DDR and RAMBUS memory, which is 3 to 4 times a fast.
I will give Apple full credit for pushing technology -- USB, Firewire, LCD monitors as standard. But they can do this only at a premium price.
At $1,200, an iMac is cheap compared to buying a base PC and adding all the features that the iMac supports
You guys ought to get together; Which is it?