About 7 years ago the Presonus Firepod (later produced with worse capacitors under the name Firpod FP10) now called Firestudio, I think, was a good compromise of price/quality. Because one would want to use a Firewire Audio Interface, if you are talking about recording music. Good Firewire Interfaces are normally very expensive, but with 8 combined XLR/chinch ins (two with phantom power) it was good quality for 400-500USD, costs a bit less today.
I do not know, if it is still "the one for Macs", but it is a start for your researches 🙂http://www.thomann.de/gb/search_dir.html?sw=presonus+firestudio&x=0&y=0