I always thought people had to pay for every update and upgrade, this company being apple, but just yesterday I found out the upgrade from 10 to 11 is free (don’t know about an upgrade from 11 to 12, are upgrades to the newest and still supported macOS version free?)
What other applications do macOS users get for free?
Do macOS users get more free apps if they create an account with apple?
I’ve understood adobe and MS-Office are active at the mac app store. How does apple’s business model work? Do I buy the app, pay once and get free updates and upgrades indefinitely? or do I have to pay them a monthly fee?
Can LibreOffice be used on a macOS?
Is there an emulator to use ubuntu or windows based apps on a mac? Are they free of charge?
I don’t have a mac but I do know some of the history as I used to: macOS used to be around $130 but macOS Snow Leopard (2009), Lion (2011) and Mountain Lion (2012) were around $20-$30. Since Mavericks (2013) onwards it has been free.
Libreoffice is available, you can install any application you want on a mac provided it’s built for macOS, just like you can on Windows and Linux. You don’t have to install it through the Store either, you can just download it from wherever it is available and install it.
Business model for the mac is that Apple sells hardware, they also have a few applications one can buy such as Final Cut Pro.
The business model for application developers is up to them.
There are tools/package managers for compiling, installing, and upgrading open-source software on a mac, MacPorts and Homebrew.
You can’t run AMD64 Windows applications but there are both free and paid virtual machines (Parallels, UTM) than can run Ubuntu for Aarch64 and Windows Aarch64 in a VM. Funny enough ARM Windows has a translation layer so it can run AMD64 applications. Don’t expect great graphical performance running Windows in a VM.