I have seen some Interesting comments about Mcintosh lately

The reputation of McIntosh and B&W has extended to many Asian countries such as China, India and Vietnam. There are plenty of buyers who are willing to pay any price to own a McIntosh B&W system. In the future, US buyers will see even more "ridiculous" price increase for these two brand names.
A canon 80mmm f/1.8 costs $370 while a f/1.2L is $2000. People always says the 1.2L is better but not 5 times better. It's not about many times better or how much an L lens should cost. It's about how many people are willing to pay the extra. You consider the McIntosh MC275 a piece of art and try to save dollar by dollar until you have enough money to buy it. It is not the case for many guys in China or India. for them, it just a matter of writing a check!
The manager at a local store was nice enough to set up a multi processor system using 7.1.4 Focal Electra speakers to compare among Integra 80.6, Marantz 8802A, Onkyo PR-SC5530 and McIntosh MX160. It took me virtually no time to figure it out which processor I needed.
Buy what you bank account allows and love what you have. Don't compare because you'll never know the true answer.

The "tube reliability" comments seem to ignore the world of tube guitar amps which have been the standard for most guitar players for generations.  Do Jadis and VTL users spill beer on their amps, drive them to gigs in bouncy vans, or utilize a pair of 1953 vintage amps at 1000 seat concert venues (Julian Lage). I'll bet Fender buys more tubes in a month than all the hifi companies combined use in a year…I've owned and abused tube guitar amps since the 60s and can absolutely attest to the reliability and toughness of these things, and to think otherwise is to simply ignore what has to be the largest group of tubers, other than potatoes and peanuts.

wolf_garcia - I agree in general, but, that said, I just replaced a 5AR4 (Mullard) after only 8 months in my pre-amp. I now have a backup, just in case.

Legumes are actually a very small group of tubers as they are not tubers at all, but peanuts themselves are a large group if each individual peanut is counted. I hope this clears up that issue. Also, tubes blow of course (had one in my hifi amp commit "tubicide" right in front of me…amp survived)…but more frighteningly I endured a SS amp blowing after a show killing an entire pile of pro bass speakers...I continue to be traumatized by that painful experience…and that was in 1978….*sniff*...