why do you think apple computers are faster than personal computers?  

I am not sure why you say that..but even though the chip we run maybe a bit slower, we have less overhead - we don't have things like virus checkers running.

Of course, you can also go to computer magazines and check out the benchmarks on the computers as well.

Overall, though you seem to pay more for less with an Apple, you are spending your money wisely and it is important to remember that the "The bitterness of poor quality is remembered long after the sweetness of low price has faded from memory.”

I personally don't think they are faster, at least from the hardware POV . Their hardware are inferior to many of the counterparts in terms of speed.

but as an operating system, MACs can be faster than windows computers. but still if you have a well tuned linux machine with an intel dual core processor, it will always beet macs in speed and performance .

What I think about the issue. Not to flame anyone .

There's no really reliable benchmark to get and compare the two. Inasmuch as the latest Apple Mac has been released and Apple claims that they have the world's fastest personal computers but that the tests on which Apple based its claims weren't fair. And frankly, those experts were right, if only because Apple tested its Power Mac G5 against Dell PCs, without regard for the fact that the world's fastest personal computer might actually be a Gateway, or an IBM!

Further, critics had another issue with Apple's claim, aside from the fact the company clearly didn't test every personal computer in the world. Experts said the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation benchmark test, which was administered by a third party, did not test the Dell machine in its optimal configuration.

When Apple laid its claim to the title of "world's fastest," tech analysts were quick to point out that if you ran the same Dell PCs with Windows XP and an Intel-optimized compiler, the Dell PCs would have scored much higher on the tests.

As a result of the controversy, British TV regulators banned Apple's "world's fastest" ads, and recently the U.S. Better Business Bureau asked Apple to stop using the claim in its advertising because it was misleading.

So what is the world's fastest personal computer? Who knows. I doubt very highly that any IBM-compatible PC can lay claim to the title.

I don't think Apple computers are faster than Windows Computers. I believe that Apple had superior machines in the late 90s and early 2000s, but not now. Modern Macs use largely the same hardware as PCs. Since Windows is more customizable than Mac OS, I believe that a properly optimized PC, especially a home built machine, would blow any Mac out of the water. Also if you were doing a cost vs. performance, Mac would never stand a chance. Those things are ridiculously overpriced.

On a side note, that "Fastest PC" crap they advertised was back in 2003. They tested it against a Pentium 4 and Intel Xeon They completely ignored the AMD Athlon, and AMD Opteron processors despite the fact that the AMD processors were the performance leader over Intel at that time. As with most "in-house" tests, the whole thing was just rigged.