Hacker News Reader

Comment by nwah1 | Hacker News Reader

macOS may have technical advantages, though less and less over time. But it always had a dramatically more restrictive business model from the very beginning.

This is what made it unattractive to business and continues to make it unattractive to many.

The restrictiveness of Apple is likely an advantage for novice mobile users, and other vendors copied it.

View on HN

You say it's unattractive to business and yet MacBook seems to be the single most popular brand of laptop at most tech companies these days.

Maybe the most visible brand, among web-dev, but HP, Lenovo, and Dell own the business/enterprise laptop market in a big way.

I'm aware, I'm a full-time Windows developer.

Around here it is a mix. Macs aren't extremely popular (3 - 5 of 20 or something) and Linux have quickly become more common and seems to be eating into the Windows marketshare.

Every time there's a huge media article about a newly discovered tracking mechanism in Windows 10, you can immediately see the posts of newcomer questions in Linux specific areas.

A lot of people seem to have switched to Ubuntu or Arch due to Windows 10 tracking. And these are also non-technical people that have no idea what they are doing, which is kinda awesome.

I always love when using Linux gets a bit easier to use as a Desktop for the wider audience.

50/50 with Linux among developers in the case of my company. In my team there are like 4 Dells and only 1 Mac.

Software developers are a tiny fraction of business users. In our industry - vaccines - most people use Windows laptops to get work done. Execs do use Apple stuff, but they're not doing the actual ground-level work, so its probably the same everywhere. Apple hardware is expensive to buy, expensive to maintain, and difficult to service due to its flawed design (everything is soldered, no easy access to components, no third party repair, no access to parts, generates lots of e-waste, etc). The OS also is not capable enough to be easily administered by IT.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com