well, to comment on a few things people have said. You can get a terrabyte raid stack on a PC much cheaper than on an Apple. And with hyperthreading and other advances, an x86 based dual processor machine will be a lot faster than the G5, at a lower cost.
When apple publishes their nubmers and benchmarks, they compile the software without optimizations that would make it run faster on a PC, among other things. This is why the results are skewed.
A good article on the subject (though slightly old) can be found
here. A quick read will reveal that a cheaper PC outperformed the then fastest Mac available. This is going to give you faster rendering, and in general make your editing experience more responsive.
Even Adobe has shifted their focus from the Apple to the PC. That's a pretty big step for that company, and it tells you something.
As far as ease of use goes, if you prefer the Apple's interface to that of a PC, that's your preference, and there's no arguing that. However, as far as price and performance go (bang for the buck) the PC is the clear choice. I'd say this is especially applicable for ski movie production, and most movies are made with low budgets, and money saved on a computer can be spent on other things such as lenses, travel, etc.
