Driving the Mac off a cliff would alienate developers and have serious repercussions on the iOS ecosystem as well.
Why do you think Apple still builds Pro apps like Logic and FCP ? They are almost certainly losing money given their ridiculously low price point, but they help with brand image and keeping the Mac the go-to platform for creatives. There’s indirect value in that.
Apple killed Shake, which was an industry standard at one point. They killed Aperture, which lots of photographers loved. They replaced Final Cut Pro 7 with a much more limited Final Cut X, and seeded lots of ground to Adobe in the process.
There's also OS X Server, although there's a strong argument to be made it wouldn't have survived in the modern world anyway, and Apple just saw the writing on the wall.
Logic does seem to have done consistently fine, at least, so that's something.
Sure, and this might be skewed by hindsight because they did make new releases for a handful of years, but it was an acquahire to develop Aperture and other color tools for Final Cut Pro. Small shops use After Effects on Windows, medium shops used Shake on Windows, and large shops used Shake in Linux. Because of hardware costs you'll be very hard-pressed to get medium or large shops to use macOS.
I also don't see Apple investing/competing with the big transitions that happened in CG over the next 5 years; 64bit, 4k/8k, and stereo. Apple had special deals where they offered Shake's source code when it was discontinued and a few studios clung on and tried valiantly to accommodate [1]
[1] https://www.studiodaily.com/2008/07/delivering-8k-vfx-shots-...
For iOS Developers, I am not so sure. If Apple came out with Xcode for Windows at WWDC, I'm pretty sure a lot of iOS developers would be overjoyed. Now, a build farm is much easier among other advantages.
I would also imagine they would remove anything having to do with the Macintosh except perhaps the Catalyst compiles which should decrease some of the neglect problems causing bugs.
How many, though, and would they really switch to Windows or Linux, or retire from the industry?
Apple has always — or at least since 1984 — had an incredibly loyal fanbase. I think that the sort of slights which would make me leave a platform just roll of their collective back.
Windows is also making a very compelling argument with WSL2
As far as I can see the Mac market share hasn't shifted in the last few years. I wouldn't take too much notice of a handful of people whinging on HN.
You can’t extrapolate from that. No less when it’s not even correct for general trends most of the time.
There are a lot of costs associated with backwards compatibility with very little payoff if it doesn't mean a lot to the bottom line.
Companies of all sizes (even FAAMNG) will act to protect that kind of existing revenue.
And my point was that you can do all of the things you listed for less than $500M; probably for less than $250M. Developers are more expensive than they used to be but $100M+ still goes a pretty long way.