there are alternatives to pretty much every application on a mac, such as itunes, as there is on a windows pc. so no, you don't have to use itunes, iphoto, imovie, etc.
if your main concern is stability, and you don't like doing the maintenence required to keep windows running at tip-top, then you may want to give a mac a try.
worse comes to worse, you can usually sell a mac without losing a lot of money, or you can run windows on a mac with one of a handful of programs (bootcamp, parallels, vmware).