> I only wish that they would go ahead and put everything under a free software license, since they're in the business of selling hardware that's coincidentally bundled with their software.

That's never going to happen. Apple sells a 'User Experience' not just hardware - having a complete and mostly closed product is an inevitable consequence of the former - and the number of Linux users that would buy a Macbook isn't a large enough part of the market for them to worry about.

With that said I've had a Macbook Pro and it was pretty much a better piece of hardware (at least as far as build quality) than any other notebook I've used.