Apples and oranges, my friend.
Poor analogy. The two just don't compare. My kids life isn't dependent upon my choice of PC or Mac.
As much as you think it's the same, it isn't.
The only good use for a <$1000 PC as a general rule is as a cheap *BSD/Linux server/gateway.
This is also wrong. A PC that costs me less than $1000 is good for a great many things. Word processing, spreadsheets, fairly decent gaming and free internet access through a $20 internal dial up 56k modem, to name but a few.
I have one that is sitting on the other side of the room I'm in now that cost me a lot less than $1000 and we do all of that and a lot more with it.
I even have it networked to the 1Gb Pentium 3 I'm on now. My son and I have hours of fun playing Doom II death matches. (He simply is no match for me with a shotgun)
I'm not saying Mac is a bad machine. I'm just saying that I would never buy one.
And for a machine that I can't really open up and rip the guts out of to do an upgrade on a whim, it costs too bloody much.
That applies to virtually every off-the-shelf PC sold in the US for the past 10 years as well. The new PowerMac G4 is more easily upgraded than virtually any PC on the market. The only ones that beat it are homemade PCs.