if you need a macbook, or it makes you work better or more efficient, by all means, buy one. but buying one just because it has more bells and whistles and looks pretty while you surf the net and you write your school papers is ridiculous.
the argument that you should always buy top quality of whatever your purchasing, also, is a pretty insane argument to make.
Noodle, no pun intended, but did you read what I wrote? What bells and whistles are you referring to? Besides, MacBook is the opposite of "top of the line" - it's a bare minimum of a computer one needs to care for these days.
Disclaimer: I work on ThinkPads with Linux on them. They're more costly than MacBooks, this is why I recommend Macbooks: they're well-built, inexpensive, modern machines that will make you more productive.
Top of the line are MBPs and ThinkPads "P"-series, $1,700+.
macbooks might be a standard for web design/development, but its overkill for grandma down the street who still uses the AOL dialup.
for a niche profession, they can be considered bare minimum, but for population-at-large, they're pretty fancy.
bare minimum to have wireless-N networking? built-in bluetooth 2.0? scalable trackpad? I wouldn't call OSX 10.5 a bare minimum OS either, and the bundled apps Apple gives you when you buy a new machine rivals any PC laptop on the market hands down no discussion. Love my Macbook, I didn't buy it to be cool, I bought it because I'm a diehard Mac user and my old Powerbook G4 was getting long in the tooth. I didn't see a reason to spend $500 more for the Pro 15" monster either, but I did get the black Macbook because I wouldn't ever own a white laptop, I needed more hard drive space, and the faster chip was icing on the cake.
For a lot of things, it is insane to buy the top of the line product. A computer, however, is a fairly major purchase. Not only are they a hunk of change, but you're going to be spending hours and hours on it, even if you are a teenage girl and not a hacker. It makes sense to buy the highest quality computer that hits the right price point, and the macbook makes a very compelling point for both.
i don't disagree with that argument, however, it comes down to value for the price point, and we as web designers/developers need a higher level computer to do our work. the things that make macbooks better are worth the money for us, by far.
however, as someone who has tried to convert people to macs, the main argument is something along the lines of "XYZ is a great feature but i don't and won't ever need it, so why should i pay for it".
For starters, Windows is barely usable on high-DPI screens. Their UIs don't scale, the graphics does not scale, the font rendering is still tuned for 72dpi.
Second, Windows users automatically get sacks of junkware pre-installed from "friends from Dell". My Lenovo T60p came with a crippled wireless because of trial versions of some "protective" software that I had to remove (online forums were full of cries).
My friend has cut a finger once by touching an edge of a Dell laptop. It happened 3 years ago and new Inspirons are better. Now he is getting "A Message from Logitech!" bubble in the corner of his screen every couple of weeks.
And finally, Windows with is antiquated window management is simply no match for Mac as far as productivity is concerned.