Almost all the software Apple makes comes for free, including OS updates. Apple was doing free OS updates long before Microsoft stepped in. The stuff that comes with macOS is kind of like how Microsoft adds a whole bunch of free stuff to Windows, and Google adds a bunch of free stuff to Android. Apple makes an excellent set of tools for musicians that Windows Movie Maker and friends can’t compete with. I find some of their other built-in tools kind of lacking, though. Depends on what you’re using the most, I guess?

Unlike any other modern OS, Apple lacks a bunch of features I can’t imagine they’re not including for weird personal issues. Maybe window snapping killed the design team’s dog, but it’s awful. There are a bunch of quality of life improvements I’d say you absolutely need to make macOS enjoyable to use; some of those are paid, others are free, or have free alternatives that may or may not be as good.

iCloud is mostly about functionality (online backups, photo albums, etc.). You can pay for more storage, and the free storage they give you will be full super quick (they’ve never bumped the free storage limit since the release of the original iPhone).

Apple sells both subscriptions and products. You can buy some applications once (though you may need to pay for updates that way), others are done through subscriptions. Not all apps are on the app store, you can download apps from the internet like on any normal device.

LibreOffice works fine. Yes, there are a bunch of VM solutions, though keep in mind that on modern versions of macOS you’ll need the arm64 version of Windows and Linux. Some are paid, some are free.

macOS has a tidbit in the EULA that says you’re only allowed to run macOS on an Apple device. You can set up a Hackintosh (quite easily, if you go the “Linux hypervisor” route!) but that’d be against the ToS. You’d also be locked out of things like iMessage and Facetime if you do that. I have an old Apple account that can’t access the app store because I tried to bypass that, lol.