Swithing to Mac and OSX - is it worth it for me?

Question

I've been a Windows user for the longest time... ever since Dos became replaced with Windows 3.1 as that's what my dad used, all the way up to Windows XP, which is what I'm running now on my desktop computer, in dual-boot with SuSe Linux 10.1.
I've been using Linux for over 4 years now... and I like it much better than Windows... I don't like M$ for ethical reasons but aside from that I find that Windows offers me much less functionality, unless you add a dozen of 3d-party apps to it, and then still.
In the near future it'll be time to upgrade again, and I'm sort of building a business case as to which platform will allow me to be the most productive in my tasks. I consider myself to be a 'power user' (although not a 'geek') and I'd like to go beyond the limits of what I'm doing right now. Only Windows doesn't allow me to do that and Linux up to a certain extent.
The problem is, I have no clue what the Mac is like... it's like an alien landscape to me ATM.
So I'm just going to try to describe the most important tasks I have to use the computer for, and I apologize for the avalanche of information and questions:
1. Website Development, Maintenance, Image Editing
For my job, I do manage the content of my company's website, using a Html-Editor (Html-Kit). However, I'm thinking about starting a small business of my own developing websites for private persons and small companies.
I'm not gifted with godly drawing skills (quite the contrary...), but I use my digital camera to capture sights and elements and then processing (filters etc.) in Photoshop to obtain the graphic elements for my webpage templates. In this case, things I'd like to be able to do are auto-downloading of photographs, batch renaming a bunch of files (with accompanying previews), batch resize of image files, e.g. to quickly create thumbnails for a thumbnail gallery. I also need to scan articles and export to PDF, or create a document from scratch and export to PDF (currently using OpenOffice, Scribus). One other question: does Mac have good OCR software?
Another thing that I do, is film movies with a digital camera, and then resizing it, putting music to it, and optimize the filesize for website playback. I don't like wmv or .mov files (both require extra plugins) however, so I'd like something that can export to mpegs or avi's
I use file management and FTP a lot, so a site-wide abd advanced search&replace functionality would be a godsend, as would be the possibility to automate certain tasks, for example resizing pictures to a thumbnail format and immediately upload it to the proper folder on the webserver.
What I don't do yet, but will need if I'm going to run a business, is a program for creating Mockups, Sitemaps, draft versions of website screens or PDF's, ... something with a set of stencils and 'connectors' that you can use to quickly layout or draw something.
As for file management, I'd like to do things like auto-sorting files according to a certain filetype, sender (mail), certain keywords, ... have the browser automatically download certain filetypes to a particular folder (e.g. all movies from site X go to the 'movies' folder), easy drag&drop and cut&paste between different applications and folders, ...
As for my personal time, I like to surf the web, e-mail people (Gmail or one of my other webbased accounts, most enabled with pop access), watch anime movies, listen to music (just bought an ipod nano last week), ...
I also play the keyboard, I have a midi-enabled keyboard and I'd like to get into producing my own music... playing the keyboard to 'simulate' the different tracks, record my voice over it, ... just hobbyist in the beginning... all this digital music stuff is overwhelming enough as it is, but perhaps I could switch to something more professional later...
I also play games, but mostly adventure games...
So is a MAc for me you think?

Answer 1

Thank you for all the replies so far... workflow is indeed one thing that I find to be extremely un-intuitive with Windows XP. File management, searching for stuff, the general 'copy here'->'paste there'->'save as this'->'start over again' way of doing things...
[quote]iWeb, also included as part of iLife, is an easy web page creator, but it too has more robust alternatives. The Adobe and Macromedia products also go a long way to making web design, photo editing, and other graphical tasks easy on a Mac.[/quote]
I'm very experienced with html, I'm getting to be quite experienced with CSS (although it seems that one ALWAYS holds more secrets no matter how much you think you know about it...). I prefer a html 'source' editor with advanced functionality (e.g. built-in FTP), or something like Dreamweaver. iWeb... doesn't really cut it for me. It's nice enough if you want to create a hobbyist site, but not if you want to work for clients, who will always be very demanding and ask "can you do it this [other] way?".
I'm probably one of the few Linux users with little to no programming or bash scripting skills... but if I could tie it in with technologies like Automator (which looks like a dream come true to me, if it actually works) then I'd be willing to learn more terminal stuff.
My music is 'hobbyist' quality (but well, you gotta start somewhere), but my web skills are much better...
I am pretty good at whipping up a website... it's just that I'm not a graphic artist so limited to using photographic elements and simple shapes, but that is sufficient. And I'm not a programmer, but I'm learning PHP and MySQL to close that gap.
The main things I want my computer to do, is to:
- save me time
- keep me organized
- help me to be creative
- offer a very deep level of integration between OS and applications.
This means having a good OS 'backend' (Windows hasn't, Linux is much better, OSX seems ... yummie) with powerful features, quality applications to help get the job done faster (and perhaps better) and offer good facilities for collecting, storing and searching for information. And an intuitive UI and way of working... As for the integration, I mean that for example, if I should use automator and/or Applescript, that there was a "FTP component" and "Request Page" component as well as the more 'general' ones (change desktop wallpaper-type stuff)...
I'm thinking of going to an Apple Center in the weekend, take Tiger for a spin...
And yes, the ability to run Windows (Boot Camp) does put me at ease a lot... although nowadays, at home, I rarely boot up Windows except for games or when I need to use Html-Kit.
But talking about games for a second, I'm kind of worried that most Macs 'only' come with X1600 graphics cards... especially for the notebooks since that won't be upgradeable. For example this year I bought a 6600GT 256MB video card for my PC (from a GF-4400MX) so I could run games like Oblivion and Dreamfall. I don't know what a X1600 compares too, but it didn't seem very powerful to me...
A Macbook seems purty... could take it anywhere. Or I could get myself a Mac Mini, I have a nice 19" screen sitting around that I don't use ATM. Of course I could hook up a Macbook to that as well. I do love my screenspace. But I'm also budget conscious, or at least trying to be. Maybe that you get what you pay for is true, but buying a new computer is still a big hole in your wallet... which is one of the reasons why I like to do some research beforehand.
What I also appreciate is:
- Community; Linux has a very good community. Mac OSX seems to be pretty good as well, judging from all the replies.
- Freedom. I'm not as strict as Stallman about it (duh ), but I like my stuff to be 'open': open protocols, open audio/video codecs, ... when buying my iPod I was being pragmatic, but if it would only have played AAC format I wouldn't have gotten it. Now I can get mp3's from emusic and play it, but I was a bit sorry it didn't support .ogg or even .flac (although last one is understandable for filesize reasons). I hate lock-in, which was the most important reason I tried out Linux anyway. That, and curiosity.
Oh boy, here I'm going again... gotta excuse me, it's just that I love "talking OS"
Which reminds me, did any of you see the new 'To Do' feature for Mail in Leopard (yes, I tried to do my homework... :p)? Anyone else wish you could also select a start and/or end date for the task? So that you could select a date and then pick 'Start Date' or 'End Date' from a picklist in the 'To Do' menu, which would fill it in the calendar.
Which reminds me, I'm starting to use Google's services (Gmail, Calendar, Event notifications, Address book) a lot... and I'm starting to actually care about portability of data... I'm making vcards for all contacts lying around, to put on my ipod... would be cool if I could 'sync' my Google calendar to my ipod... things like that.