I am learning programming and the Cocoa / Objective C environment offered in the free developers tools in Mac OS X 10.3 seems a really good place to start. Php/MySql, perl, UNIX command line tools - the mac offers a gentle introduction to these but then allows you to perform more advanced installation when you are ready to play!
The xCode environment looks like a fantastic environment to move between programming languages and acquire new skills. Fantastic online documentation.
Can I ask: Is the market share of the mac skewed by the legacy user base of wintel machines, ie. all the machines that have ever been bought and are still being used? The mac was a niche market, but with the 'switch' campaign and the fantastic os x panther and tiger the future and long term presence of the mac os is assured.
Any sources of stats would be welcome. Thanks