I purchased a Macbook Pro about 6 weeks ago. Its been great for the most part. Rather than immediately putting Kubuntu on it, I've been forcing myself to learn OSX. I like it, but its not all that much different than my Linux user experience has been. In fact, when it comes to USB audio devices, its been worse. Linux was 100% plug and play for all of my audio devices. Two of which are my Belkin TuneStudio and my SoundBlaster Extigy. I use the TuneStudio  to record podcasts on Skype. It works awesome! Just plug in your iPod and you have a very reliable, simple, almost pro quality device for recording with your computer. The Extigy is just a play awesome usb device. Even though its old it just rocks. Lots of digital options and very high quality sound.

On my Macbook, the TuneStudio worked, but the Extigy didn't. I tried one fix found at this thread on the Apple Support forums. Basically you replace the AppleUSBAudio.kext file with an older version. But it didn't seem to work and, in fact, made the problem worse because now both the TuneStudio and the Extigy didn't work. I kept looking and found a related post that also replaces the IOAudioFamily.kext file as well. Once I did that everything worked. I didn't even need a reboot. Here are the steps that I took.