Price- They’re no more expensive than a PC. Unless you buy upgrades from Apple, their premiums are insane.
Performance- I’d say there are two categories; Raw performance and Actual performance.
Raw being common benchmarks, its all comparable hardware.
Actual being use through the operating system, they blow any windows away. Spend a lot of time with a linux OS and you can match it. But you can pick up OS X so quickly, and there is freeware for nearly every task.
And this:
Is just misinformation. Not to insult, I don’t know your technical background, but this is just ignorance. I’ve managed websites, used Matlab, dialed into servers, and typed all sorts of research papers, and never once have I been “chained” or found myself wanting on my Macbook.
The gaming I concede, but the lack is mostly in FPS. If you like RPG’s or Civilization type games their selection is pretty good.
This all being said, I still keep an XP machine running. Sometimes you can get the job done on a Mac, but a PC does it smoother.