I am trying to figure which microcontroller starter kit to buy, provided i have only macs and like to code on them (and look for a solution without linux in virtualbox and the like).
It is an acceptable answer to say that all compare poorly to Linux or Windows based toolchains but has to be explained.
Depending on your needs, Arduino may be a fun starter kit with lots of shields (hardware expansions) available and a huge community. Arduino has a low entry level from both a hardware and software respective and you can still write regular C/C++ with it.
However, Arduino doesn't have a debugger. Recently Atmel has released AVR Studio 5, which is integrated into Visual Studio. It makes it even less portable to OSX, unfortunately.
I do know microchip has released MPLAB X final recently, and it is supplied for Mac OSX out of the box. I don't have a Mac to test it , but I am pretty certain it will work (have seen 1 or 2 random video's of people using it fine with Pickit 3 and PIC24's).
I use the gcc/AVR toolchain under OS-X, inside eclipse and from the command line. I don't know what other gcc code-generation options are available, but it would surprise me if gcc didn't target most of the more popular devices.
OS whatever is a FreeBSD "port". Anything rated for unix or linux can be made to work with an amount of effort proportional to your experience level.
