But I think he does have a fairly valid point. There is little that the consumer needs to buy, because for the average person, between the OS (okay, to be pedantic, the apps bundled with the OS) and web services such as gmail, they already have everything they need. My parents, for example, both have macs (my dad a laptop, my mom an iMac). My dad bought parallels, so he could run some Windows-only software for work. Other than that, neither of them have purchased anything.

We bought a Mac last year. So far, we've purchased zero additional software. I installed macports, we use NeoOffice, and I use VirtualBox for my minimal virtualization needs.

The only purchases I want to make are Photoshop, Illustrator, and some sort of photo-management system (because I'm not fond of iPhoto, though I really need to poke at it more), but I'd consider those sort of purchases as falling under the productivity software.

So yeah... there isn't all that much that consumers need to buy.