Most?? All parts of a mac are PC now

does that mean you could theoretically run mac os on a pc a long as you used hardware that there are drivers for?

Not in theory, in parctice, called a hackintosh, came out about the same time as apple went over to intel.

Theres also drivers about for other parts not officially supported by apple. I did remember seeing a few years ago a webpage that showed a $600 Dell laptop with a similar spec to a macbook that cost a heck of a lot more (one of the first intel ones), both of them were running the same OS (apple) and the dell was faster in some benchmarks and comparable in all the others, go figure...

I cant remember what is the difference, something on the BIOS or the install disk for the OS something that stops it running as apple dont want to loose the hardware side, lets face it if they can sell a 2gig stick of RAM for £80, when its actually about £30 and a 1TB HDD for £240 when there at max £120 then hell I would too!!

Actually, you can buy ram from other places for macs for a heck of a lot cheaper (like crucial) but things like GFC cads are so expensive the hardware is the one thing I dont like about macs

yeah, but its the mac ram that costs heaps.

a dell running osx better than a mac? that's pretty funny

Who cares, If your buying a new Mac you would want to get it the spec you want from apple wouldent you? Not mess about looking for RAM form here and there then open it up and mess about?? Sort of drives the point home that that its utterly overpriced if you do.

actually I dont think ive found any manufacturer that sells ram cheaper than I can get it elsewhere but I think utterly overpriced is an understatement

I have to agree with Steve here, I don't see the point in buying a pre assembled rig if you're finding yourself shop hopping for cheaper parts to supplement the build or not even having options when you're spending good money.

The issue with the hackintosh, is that you really have to dig around for some very specific hardware, and a certain manufacturer magically stopped making a certain mobo, but I think I heard that even those hardware restrictions are changing.

I know that unlike MS, Apple sells pc hardware and needs to make money but as a consumer I don't think its worth it especially since I don't have just one machine. And if you don't like Windows there's always Linux. But that's probably not even an option for the original poster because he most likely has a bunch of Mac only software.