Unfortunately this is not a solution for a large majority of people who a) don't know/care what Linux is (which is suspect is an even larger majority of Mac use

Unfortunately this is not a solution for a large majority of people who a) don't know/care what Linux is (which is suspect is an even larger majority of Mac users) or b) know what Linux is but are locked into some piece of proprietary software that only runs on the commercial OSs. I'm not one to capriciously suggest government regulation but I think there is space somewhere for something that says if you're going to offer a general computing product for sale that you need to provide support for it (in terms of bug and security fixes) for n number of years. 10 years seems appropriate in my non-expert opinion.