How to avoid the Apple tax?

[Scott (angrykeyboarder)]

Richard Bennett spake thusly:

> But of course, even though I just want to run Ubuntu on it, it comes
> preloaded with OSX.
> Has anyone heard of a way of avoiding the Mac tax, like the way people
> request a Microsoft rebate by not accepting the Ms License?

Considering Apple won't sell a full version of OS X to anyone, it's
highly unlikely that they'd ever sell their computer hardware, sans OS.

> 
> I don't want to migrate to OSX because I run all my servers on Linux

So don't migrate. Use both. That's why God invented dual booting. :)

>and
> by using it daily I learn a lot about the OS, and I have become addicted
> to the Opens source way of helping and getting helped.

You might consider the following...

	OS X runs on top of Darwin, which is open source and based on FreeBSD.

	The Safari Browser uses the WebCore HTML rendering engine, which is
based on KDE's KHTML. And in fact KDE has plans to incorporate WebCore
into KDE itself (if I have my story straight).

	If you open a terminal in OS X, you'll be in GNU Bash.

	There are scads of FLOSS apps that run in OS X (including X Window
apps. - see http://www.finkproject.org and http://www.macports.org).

I find OS X to be the best of both worlds.

Frankly, if I could get past the fact that Apple hardware is overpriced,
I'd be a Mac owner.

	
> 
> I'm not really worried about the financial cost of a bundled Mac OSX, but
> am looking for a way to show Apple that the fact that they bundle OSX on
> all their hardware is no better than the way MS get Windows preloaded on
> all consumer PCs.

Were it not for the FLOSS parts of OS X, I'd agree with you 100%.

> 
> I'll start by sending this question to their customer service and see what
> they say...

That should be good for a laugh. :)


-- 
            Scott
http://angrykeyboarder.com
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