I'm sure every brand has its horror stories. I buy the apple care protection program to cover the system for 3 years. I used to buy the added coverage for our Dells but now have 3 guys on staff to fix those because the Dell support was so horrible we ended up fixing them ourselves so many times that we essentially needed extra computers on hand to compensate for when a critical one went down and the wait time was 45 minutes to talk to a guy in India who barely can speak understandable English and often had no clue what was wrong with our systems.
The Apple care program costs a couple hundred bucks, I factor it into the cost of the purchase of all my machines, their service is typically very good, "hold time" on the phone ranges from 2 mintues to 15 minutes, but when I am off "hold" I get someone who, 9 times out of 10, can actually help. One out of 10 times I get bumped up to a senior specialist or a product specialist. Most of those times are somehow related to something I screwed up all by myself.
I guess its like tractors. Do you pay a few dollar to get a dealer who will actually provide service, stock parts, pick your machine up/deliver it to you, send you a magazine from the company 6 times a year, or do you buy your tractor from 3 states away to save a few bucks and then deal with the hassels?
I've never argued that Apple is cheaper. But I do believe that in the long run, Apple is cheaper to own, requires fewer updates, has fewer crashes, fewer conflicts, and far less grief.