BTW – I absolutely love Apple products and even own an iPhone, iPod and Apple TV – just can’t justify the cost for the full-fledged computer (Macs) or the tablet (iPad). Also I use free software that is not compatible with Macs.

Of course the OS updates do break some software; however your post says:
“you will also have to pay for upgrades to all the software you run on the computer“, which is simply false.

I’ve only had to pay for two applications’ upgrades over the years to stay at the current OS release out of the dozens and dozens of applications I use.

YMMV, etc etc

Lots of reasons to not buy a Mac, but this really isn’t one of them.

• Oxford University Computing Services: To date, Apple has released new versions of Mac OS X about every 2 years. Typically, each new version introduces a few features that are not fully backwards compatible. Mac software is regularly updated to use these features, which means that there can be no guarantee that Mac software (Apple or third-party) will run on all versions of the operating system. It is important when upgrading or installing software to check that it is compatible with the version of OS X that you run on your Mac.
• Known issues | Adobe products | Mac OS 10.7 Lion
• On the importance of backward compatibility: A lot of developers and engineers don’t agree with this way of working. If the application did something bad, or relied on some undocumented behavior, they think, it should just break when the OS gets upgraded. The developers of the Macintosh OS at Apple have always been in this camp. It’s why so few applications from the early days of the Macintosh still work…

  To contrast, I’ve got DOS applications that I wrote in 1983 for the very original IBM PC that still run flawlessly, thanks to the Raymond Chen Camp at Microsoft.

  I can almost feel the revulsion among my readership right about now. However, next time you’re in Best Buy or CompUSA, look at the shelf of Windows applications, then compare it to the shelf of Mac applications, and perhaps you’ll better understand why it’s important.

Huh? This is patent nonsense.

I’ve upgraded various Macs through OS versions over the years and transitioned to new hardware. Run old software all the time. Much more often is the case that new versions of these applications don’t support an older OS that you might still be running. If XP wasn’t so entrenched, I’d imagine this would be the case for Windows 7 software developers too.

I can only assume you’re referring to ‘Rosetta’ being dropped from OS X 10.7, five years after the last PowerPC-based Mac shipped. Anyone looking at Macs today will be unaffected by this*.

*Except for Quicken. Intuit is a pack of idiots and still doesn’t have a version of its Mac software that works with Intel-based Macs, but it’s still not a point in favour of your claim, since you can’t even buy a new version of Quicken. Idiots.

I will definitely looking into free-to-air satellite, and just simple free HD broadcasts (e.g. CBC).