iPods / MP3 players can take quite a bit of physical abuse in the hands of some people, which is bound to cause failures. We have had 3 iPods (2 iPod classics and an iPod video) without a seconds trouble and the 80GB video is well over 2 years old.
Style over substance? To a certain extent yes, but then, as photographers we appreciate a bit of style, don't we
I really like my iMac for the fact that it is VERY quiet out of the box (I know you can get quiet PCs, but it takes a lot of effort), that my wife doesn't complain about the ugly grey box in her dining room (which is where my home office is) and that using Bootcamp I can run Windows on it for those applications which just aren't available on OSX.
I agree that OSX is a good operating system, it is certainly stable - I have had only one problem in the 14 months I have owned the iMac and that was very quickly dealt with by calling Apple support, who were courteous, efficient, knowledgeable and when I phoned them a human answered the phone very quickly (which in this day and age are all unusual experiences). If you live near to an Apple store (I have one 10 mins away), the service from the store is excellent and you can generally get answers to any questions you have very quickly.
All in all I am pleased I bought the desktop iMac, and would buy another when this one either gets too long in the tooth to run the software I want / need, or gives up the ghost permanently.
I doubt whether the Apple prices will drop much (Apple is a hardware company really - that is where they make the big money from), so if you WANT a MacBook I wouldn't delay waiting for a price cut, as it is unlikely to happen.....
Oh - and I have heard that it is possible to get OSX running on a non Apple computer
although of course I have to point out that would be a violation of Apple's licensing terms
