Well I would have to disagree with everyone here for the most part.
I use Maya on both PC's at the school lab and a dual G5 2 Ghz at home.
I find the experience on the Mac very good overall.
Interface problems? Not really. Only very very minor things to be concerned about, and certainely nothing that slows me down. The renaming of things in the outliner is actually very simple... you double-click and type. He's right that it looks a little odd when you select text after double-clicking (if you only want to change a portion of the name...) but it still works - doesn't slow you down or screw-up - its just an aesthetic problem.
The hot-box works just fine for me... in fact I use it all the time. It did have its little issues here and there previous to 6.0... but they are ironing these kinks out fairly quickly. 6.5 is proving to be even nicer.
Rendering? Puhleeease. It works JUST fine. In fact, I use Mental Ray 90% of the time and the render speeds are pretty darn quick. There are benchmarks out there showing that the G5 does in fact hold its own compared to the other systems out there. That doesn't mean its the fastest... but it is pretty fast. Unfortunately it looks like we have to wait til Fall for dual core G5's. So if you are basing your decision on purely performance of rendering... then you should go PC.
Another nice thing about rendering on OS X is it doesn't bring the rest of your system to a crawl. Its a whole lot of fun when you try to browse the web/ check your e-mail on a PC while you are rendering something in the Render View. Usually the RV blanks out and you just wait it out... crossing your fingers that the render actually kept going and didn't tank out. You can no longer see it progressing along (aka looking for something you don't like so you can kill the render.) Definitely annoying. (btw I'm talking Windows... it probably behaves much better on Irix.) On OS X I can flip through other programs and do whatever I want (keep in mind you are taking processing power away from the render) and come back to Maya without a hitch. PS rendering command-line on OS X is awesome... never hangs or tanks for any reason. Windows seems to have that happen fairly often. I'm sure this is also better on IRIX.
Stability?? Are you kidding? I use Maya on a Mac 12-15 hours a day most days of the week... and like 3-6 hours every couple days on a PC. I have SO many more crashes on the PC's at school its unbelievable. Maya crashes maybe twice a month on my Mac. No lying I SWEAR to you. And when it does crash, it always manages to save out a copy of the file... even if I force quit it. Then thanks to true protected memory it boots up again without a problem. No restart required. Many times on the PC the hang requires a restart.
The one area that I do have a gripe with is no SERIOUS pro video card. I want a Quaddro or a Fire in my system. Rumors say they are coming... but who knows. The Radeon 9800 Pro does perform admirably, but a Fire would be nicer.
I do a lot of other work on my system... editing/compositing (shake/after effects)/web design and development/ graphics work... etc. and I love that I can do it all on this system and it takes it like a champ. I'm a huge fan of the OS X environment... I feel it lets me work quicker, and its solid as a rock. Plus it feels a little less like WORK.
btw I don't know what Catzzzpaws was talking about. I have never had problems with nodes not working like they were supposed to... any random (mac specific) errors... NEVER a destroyed file...
as for file format compatibility... this guy really just doesn't know what he's talking about. You can get the iff format plugin directly off the photoshop cd. It works flawlessly. And if you save a tiff in photoshop... ALWAYS save it with IBM/PC bit format... for anything. All mac programs (including Maya / Quicktime / Preview / Whatever) read them fine.
"Nonfunctioning displacements, overly high rendertimes, selfdestructing placementnodes, etc."
I use displacement just fine... my render time on Mental Ray are fantastic... I haven't had a 'selfdestructing placement node'
"still no memory mapped textures, still no fully functioning fcheck)"
as of 6.5 you have imf_copy to create your .map file textures. It works great. As does the new fcheck.
Many 3rd part plugins are now available on the mac, and many more are coming soon. If you need a plugin that they haven't made available to the mac yet, then check that first and don't buy a mac.
I haven't done much in the way of network render management software... but I know there are some available. As of 6.5 the mental ray that comes with maya includes the ability to install satelites on other computers (pc or mac) and do network based render management.
The 3rd party mel scripts/toolkits that I have tried have all worked. I don't use the ones he specified... but I do make serious use of MJ Poly Tools and it works perfectly... among many other scripts used on a daily basis.
So to sum it up... if you are looking for nothing other than the top performer in Maya, definitely go PC. Also try to go Irix. If you like the experience of OS X better at all... then you won't be dissappointed by Maya's performance in it. Its a fairly enjoyable experience.
Hope that was comprehensive enough to help you decide.
~Robert
