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Err, no, or mind showing your work?

Here's my recent comparison, it's almost a year old and therefore is not valid anymore. And in that post I even state buyers shouldn't upgrade the RAM because Apple charges more for them than third parties do, just as I said in the post you replied to does. Currently comparing Mac Pros doesn't work as the Pros use 2 year old Xeon CPUs, but it will soon hopefully. Tim Cook better keep his word that Mac Pros will be upgraded to the most recent Xeons and include Thunderbolt. However comparisons are possible with laptops, I won't try the all-in-one iMac nor the Mac Mini.

The 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display

• 2.7GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.7GHz
• 15.4-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit display with IPS technology with 2880-by-1800 native resolution scaled to 1920x1200
• 8GB 1600MHz DDR3L
• 512GB Flash Storage

$3,049.00

Dell Precision M4700 Mobile Workstation

• 3rd Gen Intel® Core i7-3740QM Processor (2.7GHz, 6M cache, Upgradable to Intel® vPro technology)
• 15.6" UltraSharp FHD (1920x1080)
• 8.0GB, DDR3-1600MHz
• 750GB 2.5" 7200rpm Hard Drive

$2,498.53, with $700 off making it $1,699.00.

Not quite comparable. A second Dell Precision M4700 Mobile Workstation

• 3rd Gen Intel® Core i7-3840QM Processor (2.8GHz, 8M cache, Upgradable to Intel® vPro technology)
• 15.6" UltraSharp FHD (1920x1080)
• 16.0GB, DDR3-1600MHz
• 512GB 2.5" (SATA3) Mobility Solid State Drive
• Resource DVD - Contains Drivers
• Recovery Media for Windows® 7 Professional,64bit,Multiple Language

$4,187.59 with instant savings of $1,340.03 making it $2,847.56

I tried to configure both of these to be closer to the MacBook Pro, but only the second offered hardware configuration that I saw.

And you're right, it isn't that restricted, aside from not being able to even change your own battery.

I've posted elsewhere that I hated it that the battery is soldered in and is not user swappable. When I bought my MacBook Pro, I got a second battery with it so when the first one drained down during use when I wasn't near an outlet I could swap them, though it's too big for most people I did want a big display and be able to go hours and hours without needing to be plugged in, ie I wanted to take it hiking. Weight? I used to hike carrying 50+ lbs and have hiked carrying 120 lbs. If I can't carry just 10 lbs then I'm in real bad shape.

The bigger problems are their complete disregarded for backwards and forward compatibility and the small selection of software, and no, linux software doesn't count.

Backwards and forwards compatibility? What does that mean? What does small selection of software mean too? And why doesn't Linux software count? Because if it is counted Macs run more software than both Linux and MS Windows? That is an arbitrary limit for no good reason.

However native OS X apps the iTunes app store alone has thousands of downloadable programs. Now I've haven't used iTunes yet, I may use it to download classes from iTunes U which has lectures from a number of universities including MIT. However I prefer to buy my software on media I can keep, CDs or DVDs. Of course a person can download then burn programs on disks, such as from , Source Forge, and

For OSX its the opposite. For every small task that i want to accomplish, i seem to need to pony up. Every small time programmer tries to make a buck with his little program. Nothing wrong with that, but where are the Free/Libre alternatives?

What "small tasks" are you trying to accomplish, that you can't find several Free (or nearly so) alternatives? I'm not being nasty, I'm just curious; because, with very few exceptions (decent scanning software being the one I can think of), most of the apps on my Mac are Freeware.

I have a few shareware apps that I have considered good enough to purchase (and/or couldn't find a suitable free app in the time I had to search), but (other than VueScan at $40), none have been more than $25, and most have been in the $5-20 world.

Plus, there are many, many projects on Sourceforge, MacPorts, and Fink that are simply OS X versions of Linux F/OSS projects that offer precompiled, installable binaries for OS X. OpenOffice/LibreOffice/NeoOffice, the Gimp, Audacity, XBMC, Azereus/Vuze, Adium, Eclipse, gcc, all come immediately to mind. And there are many, many more.

In fact, Sourceforge alone lists 12,616 results under the "Mac" platform. All free. All Open Source.

In addition, you might check out the highly popular Mac software aggregator, Macupdate.com. They have all types of software, including free apps and inexpensive shareware (as well as "commercial"), and the "license type" is clearly listed in the "search results", so you don't have to look through dozens of apps individually, just to find the "free" ones. I have no affilation with MacUpdate, but highly recommend it. C|Net also has a variety of Mac software, some free, some not. And there are others. Many others. I don't know about these sites, but Google-ing for free mac software, the following sites came up in the first few hits: http://www.freemacware.com/, http://opensourcemac.org/, http://www.applemacfreeware.com/, http://web.mac.com/simon_elliott/simon_elliott@mac.com/Software.html. And that was just a few that looked interesting on the first search result page

Bottom line: If you can't find FREE OS X apps, you either have some severely corner-case application-needs; or are just not looking. ;-)

OSX's walled garden

OS X is a certified UNIX on which one can install just about any third-party proprietary app (made by, for example, Adobe and Microsoft) as wells as tons of open-source software. Much of the underpinnings of OS X is itself open source.

What precisely do you mean by "walled garden" given these facts? Oh, you were trolling. Never mind, then. Carry on.

I second this idea, I would like to see it become a useful resource for both users and developers/artists. There could be a directory and a customized search engine pointing to good resources about open source and creative commons materials.

For developers it could help find libraries with selected license (BSD and MIT like licenses in addition to GPL like), links to free tutorials, books, documentation and interesting projects to collaborate by language, information about different licenses. Also a message board or news section for finding collaborators for and announcing new projects might be useful.

Wiki works too for a dictionary claryifying some terms about open source, but I think it should just be a part of the site. I see a collectively edited Dmoz or Yahoo style link directory equally useful. For inspiration on making new users for open source software: http://www.opensourcemac.org/

On the software side, there is already Github, Sourceforge and many more, but open.org could provide some visual statistics about most used open source software, most active projects, most liked projects the information being collected from different sites and repository hosts. Github and ohloh.net do a good work of being useful for both developers and users. In my opinion Sourceforge has gone much worse in this respect in the last two versions, unvisionarily mixing the two sides and not catering to either.

As for the self-sustaining revenue: On the web there's generally four ways to make money:
Donations, ads, selling some useful items or services and porn.

Are you stating I can't install my own memory, my own hard drive, my own optical disk, MP3's, MP4's, Blu-Ray rips (yes you can also rip those on a Mac), DVD's, Operating Systems, etc, etc. ad-nauseum? Need hardware? It's just a click away on Amazon, just as it is for every laptop and PC out there.

There is a plethora of Mac and Unix FOSS available, just as there is for Linux.

http://www.macupdate.com/
http://www.versiontracker.com/macosx/
http://www.sourceforge.net/
http://mac.softpedia.com/
http://www.opensourcemac.org/

Your argument is patently ridiculous and reeks of trolling.

Agreed. I simply feel no need to peddle on warez sites. Open source, freeware as well as low cost payware are abundant enough and fill the gaps for a decently low price. Why take the risk?

http://www.versiontracker.com/macosx/
http://mac.softpedia.com/
http://www.opensourcemac.org/
http://www.macorchard.com/
http://www.macupdate.com/

I've purchased 3 apps since switching to Mac last year. VMWare Fusion, an encoding app, and another to sync my gmail calendars to OS X Mail's calendars. Everything else I've needed has been free via Open Source sites found above. Gimp and OpenOffice handle the other basics. Why would you need warez?

Well, there's FreeMacWare.com, OpenSourceMac.org, Fink, MacPorts, and even VersionTracker lets you sort by license.

Ahem...there is Freeware for Mac OS X. There is also F/OSS for Mac OS X. And if you want more F/OSS, you can use Fink or MacPorts. Fink basically gives Mac OS X Debian file tools, and MacPorts gives Mac OS X the FreeBSD Ports system. Finally, if one can get the source code and you have Mac developer tools installed, you can roll your own. Use the Source, Luke.

You can now conceivably run your Mac completely with F/OSS equivalents of all the useful stuff one uses that one usually pays for. It's nice to have the iApps but they aren't even necessary unless you want to bring in and edit video. For that purpose iMovie '06 (a free download for those who have iMovie '08 or even just an iMovie '08 license) is best unless you want to pay for something better like Premiere or Final Cut Express.

There. Hope that helps.

Not sure where they're getting their information from, but I use sites like

http://www.freemacware.com/
http://osx.hyperjeff.net/Apps/
http://www.opensourcemac.org/

and have never had any problem finding the right OSS or freeware tool to do a job.

I also enjoy perusing individual people's lists such as

http://wiki.43folders.com/index.php/OS_X_Inventori es
http://generaldisarray.wordpress.com/2006/02/11/ni fty-os-x-apps-list/
http://www.digitaldarknet.net/thelist/index.php?pa ge=macintosh
http://macskill.com/softwareupdate

and getting some great recommendations for apps to try out.

It seems like the author simply didn't do enough research before making his report.

Hope these links can help others find stuff they might otherwise not have known about.

OpenSourceMac should get you started on freeware...

This list is unfortunately lacking in the free/opensource department. And like many other Mac sites they fail to indicate what's closed source and what's not, and when they say "free" they really mean that "beer" kind of free which is annoying (but that's another subject).

Personally I use non-free software only when I REALLY need something and there's absolutely no free alternative (and yes that's the "freedom" kind of free here).

Open Source Mac is a good resource for free/opensource software on the Mac. I'd suggest you check it out if you haven't already.

http://opensourcemac.org/

I like Open Source Mac for open source software that runs on Macs. It's easy to hand out to friends who have Macs.

For OSS Mac stuff, a good guide is OpenSourceMac.

These sites are exactly what you're talking about. They don't try to give you a complete list, just a few solid titles in each category. I discovered several titles from that site that I wouldn't have known about otherwise. http://www.opensourcemac.org/ and http://www.opensourcewindows.org/