I've been on a mac forever so I can't really help much with the learning curve - it IS user friendly as long as you are willing to jump in and get over some of the little hurdles (i don't know how else to say it haha)
Everything will work fine though - you don't need to worry about the mac files those actually only come up when you unzip or open something on a PC that was originally made on a mac.
come to the dark side!! we have cookies!
One thing I will say.... as macs have grown in popularity I sometimes think that they aren't being made as well as they were in the past? More and more people seem to be having technical issues on a mac that never happened before. My HD died on me last spring and that was a first for me.