Here are soem great Open Source alternatives you can use on the mac.

Web Browsing

Mozilla Firefox
The premier free, open-source browser. Tabs, pop-up blocking, themes, and extensions. Considered by many to be the world's best browser.


Camino
Based on the same Mozilla foundation as Firefox, Camino is a more native OS X app. Fast and simple.


Video Player / Video Podcasting

Miro
Beautiful interface. Plays any video type (much more than quicktime). Subscribe to video RSS, download, and watch all in one. Torrent support. Search and download from YouTube and others.

IM - Instant Messaging

Adium
Connect to multiple IM accounts simultaneously in a single app, including: AOL IM, MSN, and Jabber. Beautiful, themable interface.

Application Launching

Quicksilver
Quicksilver lets you start applications (and do just about everything) with a few quick taps of your fingers. Warning: start using Quicksilver and you won't be able to imagine using a Mac without it.

Software packs

MacLibre
Installs a pack of great open source apps (including many on this page) and keeps them updated for you.

Email

Mozilla Thunderbird
Powerful spam filtering, solid interface, and all the features you need.

Utilities

The Unarchiver
Uncompress RAR, 7zip, tar, and bz2 files on your Mac. Many new Mac users will be puzzled the first time they download a RAR file. Do them a favor and download UnRarX for them!

RSS

Vienna
Very nice, native RSS client.


RSSOwl
Solid cross-platform RSS client.

Peer-to-Peer Filesharing

Cabos
A simple, easy to use filesharing program. Gnutella network.

Transmission
Very nice torrent downloader.

Running Windows Software on Macs

Q Emulator
Run Windows programs on your Intel Mac at near native speed. Works on G4 / G5 Macs too, but much slower.

Podcasting

Juice
Solid podcasting client.

Video Playback

VLC
Plays more video files than most players: Quicktime, AVI, DIVX, OGG, and more. Pretty good interface.

MPlayer
The interface and buttons are not as nice or as Mac-like in feel, but it may play even more video files than VLC.

MPlayer
Perian
A plugin that allows quicktime to play additional video formats. (Included in Democracy Player.)

iPod Ripping

Senuti
Get music off of your iPod onto any computer.


iPodDisk
Copy music off your iPod in the finder, like a regular disk drive.

DVD Ripping

Handbrake
DVD ripper and MPEG-4 / H.264 encoding. Very simple to use.

CD / DVD Burning

Burn
CD and DVD Burner. Burn any video to a disc that plays in your DVD player!

Privacy

Vidalia
This TOR frontend keeps you anonymous on the web using military-grade techniques. For use with Firefox see: TorButton.

Word Processing / Office Suites

Bean
Very fast and easy to use word processor. Live word count, autosaving, more.

NeoOffice
Built on OpenOffice.org. Big, full featured suite of tools for word processing and spreadsheets. Compatible with Microsoft Word documents and OpenDocument Format.

AbiWord
A word processor. Leaner and quicker than OpenOffice. Compatible with Microsoft Word documents and OpenDocument Format.

Wifi Scanning

KisMac
The best wireless scanner for Mac. Find wireless access when you're on the go.

Sound Recording

Audacity
Simple sound recording tool.

Graphics, Photo, Publishing

Seashore
Based on Gimp, but doesn't require X11.

Xee
Fast image viewer and image browser.

gimp
Photo editing application that rivals Photoshop in features (requires X11).


Inkscape
Vector graphics application (requires X11).

Scribus
Desktop publishing. Complicated install, but a nice app.

FTP / SFTP

Cyberduck
Very good all-around ftp program.


OneButton FTP
Simple, fast FTP, with a focus on "advanced queuing".

Fugu
Not as polished as Cyberduck (and only for SFTP) but has a side by side interface showing your files and the remote files.

HTML / Text Editing

Smultron

Text / html editor. Integrates with Cyberduck for editing websites.

Nvu
Visual tool for making websites (WYSIWYG html editor), comparable to Dreamweaver.

IRC

Colloquy
Great IRC client.

Don't you think I already use Firefox? And by the way, I use Firefox, Opera, Safari, Avant and Internet Explorer only when necessary (but of course not on Linux).


I use RocketDock for Windows so I think that the Dock in Mac would be sufficient for me


I do use Mozilla Thunderbird but I am more used to using the web-based GMail interface and also for Windows Live Hotmail. As for RSS, I use Google Reader only when necessary and the in-browser "live bookmarks" to keep track of weather from Environment Canada. Otherwise, I don't use RSS all that much.


Does LimeWire work on Macs? It's open-source, but I don't know if it is Mac-compatible. I use it on Linux.


Is this something similar to Boot Camp (something that I've heard of)? Or is Boot Camp a partitioning utility thing? Also, is VMWare something similar to this Q Emulator thing?


I think that QuickTime and iTunes would be sufficient for me on a Mac. MPlayer I use on Ubuntu, it's really basic and can play DVDs for me.


Well there is Microsoft Office for Mac, but it isn't open-source. I don't think my parents would buy that either, so OpenOffice all the way. AbiWord is quite simple and can run from my USB drive, I've never heard of NeoOffice before.


I use Audacity on Windows and Linux as well as my USB drive. Very useful for some quick sound editing.


I use the GIMP, I have it on Linux and I use it on Windows. A bit hard to learn for beginners, but you get the hang of it once you explore more of its options. Once you learn the GIMP, Photoshop becomes easily (it could be the other way around, but I don't know).


I think I would prefer a text editor for editing HTML sites, but I'm trying NVU on Ubuntu right now. I don't like WYSIWYG software much, but when needed, I do use it. I write HTML faster though.

Thanks for the list of software, I'm sure that many others will find it to be useful. As for getting a Mac, I don't think my parents are that interested in it.

LimeWire works on Macs since it is written in Java. As for boot camp, it's just a BIOS layer on top of Mac's EFI for dual booting. You can use Boot Camp to boot Linux too. I rather you use VMWare Fusion or Parallels Desktop for Mac to run Windows in your MacOS X installation than QEMU because QEMU will emulate everything, you don't want that since it will take a lot of resources. VMWare and Parallels uses virtual machining and splits the CPU and resources to handle multiple operating systems.

NeoOffice is basically OpenOffice but written in Java so that it runs on the Mac easier and to incorporate the Aqua look and feel. GIMP works on Macs too. You could also use TextEdit to make webpages.

xboxrulz

I just wanted to add that Macs are not actually more expensive. This is a line I hear all the time and it drives me batty. Sure you can go to Wal-Mart and buy a cheap PC for 500 dollars. However if you look the actual specifications you will discover that you are not getting a good deal at all. Apple simply does not bother making very low end machines.

For a short time I worked on AOL's help desk (an absolute nightmare!) There was an astounding amount of calls from users who could not run the AOL software on brand new machines. These were PCs that shipped with just enough ram to run Windows and nothing else. (It is hard to explain to people that the machine they just bought is total garbage.)

The cost of ownership for a Mac, in my experience, is much less than a Windows machine. Macs that are several years old still tend to run rather well and have a usefull life much longer than the average PC. Apple does not have the goal of making their own products obsolete every few years.

Actually, even though I support Apple, I must say that I just built a gaming PC for $500 CAD, it was great, it was comparable w/ an iMac with some stuff obviously axed. Main reason? CPU, I use an AMD chipset/CPU. That's the bad thing about Apple choosing one manufacturer, you may get cheaper parts from the competition instead of sticking to one company.

xboxrulz

Yes, if you know what you are doing you can build your own system for a decent price. But, I have to ask, does that $500 include a Monitor and an OS?

No, machine only.