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Comment by scarface74 | Hacker News Reader

The Mac is 10% of Apple’s revenue. How much of that 10% do you really think are developers that would switch just because Microsoft supports Linux? Especially considering that macOS is a real certified Unix not just tacked on.

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How many developers care about "certified Unix", or can even say exactly what that means? Is anyone buying Macintosh computers in order to run their certified Unix software?

Linux isn't certified, and none of developers using that seem to mind. If Microsoft got WSL "certified", would any Linux user consider it a better Linux than Linux?

None.

The point is how many people care about running Linux in a VM (which is all WSL2 is) on Windows instead of running a native Unix operating system? Out of those that do care about running Linux, what is the practical difference between running Linux in a VM on Windows and Linux on a VM on Macs?

Apple doesn’t put time and effort into making Linux on a VM feel at home on macOS.

It doesn’t have to. How does WSL feel “more at home” than the third party VM solutions available for Macs?

Actually there are Linux distributions that are UNIX certified, namely Inspur K-UX and EulerOS 2.0.

https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3617.htm

https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3622.htm

There are tail wagging the dog incentives here.

Part (not all) of the Mac resurgence was that you needed a Mac to develop iPhone apps.

Part (not all) of the new Windows resurgence is that if you even really want to play around with ML or VR dev you need a Windows machine.

I feel like it's about the possibilities - with WSL, Windows Terminal I get what's essentially the mac experience but can suddenly do so much more.

The Mac’s “resurgence” started around 1999 with the introduction of the iMac - 9 years before the App Store opened. Apple currently sells around 16-20 million Macs a year.

No matter how good WSL is, if you want to develop iOS apps, you still have to buy a Mac.

There are around 200 million consumer PCs sold a year. Do you really think any significant number or sold to develop VR apps - that market is minis use.

They resurged because windows laptops was straight trash and wireless worked like shit. Apple only needed to do a few things better back then.

What makes windows better than osx for VR?

Most of the VR platforms just aren't supporting Mac b/c of the smaller playerbase, lack of higher end video card support and games support.

Well, one of the biggest platforms for VR gaming has dropped support for Mac OS.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/1/21244468/steam-mac-support...

Coupled with a history of GPU driver support usually being best on Windows and having good GPU support is usually pretty important for VR, its pretty clear why Windows is probably the best platform for VR development at the moment.

To put this in perspective, less than 2% of Steam users have a VR headset. It isn’t exactly a huge market.

https://www.engadget.com/half-life-alyx-adds-1-million-vr-us...

> Part (not all) of the new Windows resurgence is that if you even really want to play around with ML...

Do you mean machine learning? If so, then that doesn't match my experience at all.

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