I once used an iMac with OS X. During the start it displayed no information, there was no commandline, no choice, in what desktop environment I wanted to use and only IE and safari. The best thing about the GNU/Linux distributions is that that you have for most things at least two, often more than ten choices. Another thing is configurability. Under KDE you can for example configure the task bar (klipper) as much as you like. Under Mac OS that was not possible or at least not obvious.
"By default" is the keyword here. By default, you get no information and no choice. Instead, you get a machine that works without trying to worry you with things that you don't understand. The Apple philosophy is that choice is confusing, and therefore *by default* choice is not offered.
However, *nix geeks wouldn't use the Mac if choice was impossible. In fact it's easy :-) The whole underlying OS, Darwin, is open sourced. Apple provide an X11 server (XFree86, in fact), and a complete development environment based around gcc. bash and tclsh are there - all you have to do is run the "Terminal" program, the same as you would on a GUI-login Linux box.
It's true that the whole Aqua interface isn't configurable in the same way that KDE or Gnome are. But extreme configurability is a very overrated facility, IMHO. Some of the Apple apps have better functionality and/or usability than OSS alternatives - probably because Apple only have to account for one OS and one hardware platform, plus they can pay for a mass development effort. At the same time, they also open up their API so that the OSS alternatives can work well if they want to. Both sides win.
(RMS would probably say that FLOSS that uses closed libraries isn't FLOSS, in the same way that Java code cannot be FLOSS. Go RMS)
When apple offers an operating system with at least half the rpms and configurability as let's say SuSE and when they preinstall a bash, Camino/Firefox/Mozilla and KDE or Gnome as a second desktop environment I consider buying it. Oh, and they should really think about adding one or two more mouse buttons. Using always this combination of keypad and mouse is annoying. ;)
None of things you want to see fit in Apple's philosophy, so they won't provide it. However, all of these things are easily done, because Apple know that some of their users want the flexibility. IIRC, multi-button mice have worked with Macs since OS 8.6 - just plug one in and it works. Did you try plugging one in?
If this is really your philosophy, then I don't think you'll be purchasing a Mac even if "their OS gets better". Buy one anyway, and run Ubuntu on it :-)Use free software only. See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
-jim
