Why are there so many Mac users?

Simple -- you can spend your time working WITH your MAC instead of workin ON your PC.

I have had one MAC freeze/crash in 7 years (my personal computers) versus an average of 1 per month with PC (work computer) -- talk about economy problems, I bet if my employer would switch to MAC we could save probably over $100,000 per year in computer related WASTED time!

Could I rip with EAC on the PC, store the files on an extarnal HD, and have the Mac play the tunes?

Someone correct me here if I'm wrong: You can rip using EAC, but you would then have to convert the files (I think from FLAC) to an iTunes-recognizable format like AIFF or Apple Lossless or WAV (In order of my personal preference). This method STILL sounds better (than the same file ripped in iTunes to the same format), to my ears, at least in the case of one experiment a friend and I conducted with one file on two systems. This was at the suggestion of Steve Nugent (Empirical Audio) - who has done a lot of work around this aspect of audio reproduction and makes some of the best devices out there to implement digital audio. He contributes here so perhaps he can chime in on this, as he may have something new to say or correct me if I've misstated anything. Anyway, I believe EAC is among a few PC ripping solutions that have superior error correction over iTunes. I think that actually hearing these differences will depend entirely upon the system/components you are using to listen to the files on. What may be obvious on a very resolving system, might not be on a less resolving one, for example.

Here it is in a nutshell:

FUN = MAC....

WORK = PC....

Simple - it's UNIX based, not crappy-Windows

I just put an IMac in my system and love it...you can see how I have it hooked up on my system page...

Also have an airport express running the bedroom stereo--it receives music wirelessly from the IMac thru my router and has a mini rca plug to go directly to my pre amp--easy, no wires to run and now I have the same music playing on the main stereo as in the bedroom ...

Still have a PC in my office and am learning the differences twixt them...

Mitch