I agree with you that their software is the most compelling part of the Mac. But the reason people tend to say Apple is a hardware company is because that's where the money is made.
It's not wrong to say that the software drives the sales of the hardware. The software is outstanding, and compels people to purchase the profitable hardware.
The problem is that often (not always), proprietary software is just better than any free equivalent. I will gladly sacrifice some freedom to gain quality.
Seems kinda silly that you're referring to Scheme as a "modern programming language" and then excluding C/C++/Objective-C. Scheme dates back to 1975, while Objective-C is only from 1986. So by your standards, Scheme would be considered less modern than Objective-C.
That's not the worst case though. The worst case is the possibility of ruining your finances because you have no income while trying your startup. And what if you can't find a job when you finally give up?
Reports indicate that the $29 version will install on a clean machine just fine, no need to install Leopard first. It's kind of an honor system thing with Apple.
i've been using colemak for about a year and a half, and i'm very happy with it. the few times i'm forced to go without it, i can feel how much more my fingers are moving. emacs is quite usable with it, but vim requires some remapping (i'm an emacs guy so i haven't put too much effort it).
actually, objective-c is not strongly typed. it is quite dynamic, despite the fact that you often see types specified. you could replace every declared type with 'id', and your code would still work, and it would be dynamically typed.
not every developer wants to develop on their os. rather, I would like computer that "just works" so that I can do my development work.
yes it's cool to be interested in what's under the hood, but once you've tried to get your wireless working for hours on numerous occasions, you start to appreciate when things just work. i got sick of wasting my time.