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Comment by Stranger43 | Hacker News Reader

not in 2021, but apple made sort of an big deal about it when they started to market OSX 20 years ago.

And while you can still find an traditional unix(tm) box here and there in the dusty forgotten corners of enterprise serverooms(i am personally responsible for maintaining a few hpux boxen), unix(tm) certification haven't really mattered since Linux became serious business which happened around the same time OSX was launched.

What used to matter was that you could run the same CLI tooling in an macos desktop as on an Linux server but i don't think this is an use case apple see's as particularly important for the future success of Apple.

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That’s the only reason my employer hands out MacBooks. If it stopped being something that used the same CLI tooling as our infrastructure, it would be Dells all around.

Ironically, Dell ships it's XPS "developer editions" with Ubuntu, which is likely much closer to your infra.

IMO, Apple still sees it as very important that macOS is fairly attractive for developers. Of course they’re selling lots of MacBook Airs to college students, but outside of that…

It’s not as if they want their CLI interaction to be 1-for-1 with Linux, but relatively close seems to still be a priority.

Do you have more info on that? Fairly attractive for macOS and iOS developers sure, but for me it was a happy accident that Macs also became popular for web development and Linux server admin, that it was never part of the strategy of Apple.

Companies see Mac products as more attractive for their workforce than Linux-based workstations. Having printers, wifi, other products seemlessly work, since Apple devotes time and money ensuring that, improves productivity, generally, and lowers costs in (in terms of Helpdesk staff and time spent diagnosing and fixing systems integration). So, developers and admins make use of what's offered, as it is a middle-ground between stability and functionality.

While it may have been a happy accident, it's a pretty big market.

Precovid, on any conference I went to, professional or academic, the amount of Apple laptops was insane. I'm sure they're running things locally or on Linux servers, but the fact that they work pretty well between them is important.

For anecdata, I've worked at two companies in a row now that have used exclusively Macs because it's simultaneously an acceptable platform for serious dev work and still user-friendly to tech illiterate interns.

I can't consciously buy a Mac if Apple is going to treat Linux like competition. One is free software, provided by volunteers for free, and the other is a desktop OS ran by the largest company in the world. It costs Apple nothing to respect the predominant standards, so why can't they do it?

> It costs Apple nothing to respect the predominant standards

Actually, it would cost them a lot, due to the GPL. Sure, they could try and pull a Google re: Java/Oracle feud, but I doubt they will and for good reason.

Maybe they don't care about you as a customer? Apple has never pretended to cater to everyone.

They aren't for you. Move on.

I agree, Macs aren't for me. But if Apple wants to increase their market share (hint: they're one of the most-traded shares of all time), they should start listening to their detractors. Especially for their desktops, where MacOS barely constitutes 7% of the desktop market share. Apple has been selling computers for nearly 5 decades, and their market share is still pitiful. Hell, if Google is selling more computers than you, something is seriously wrong with your computer.

Again, Apple is not interested in catering to you. Clearly. I think they're pretty happy with where they are, and catering to the demands of the "make it like Linux" crew are laughably irrelevant. I have no idea why "most-traded shares" is pertinent -- yeah, they're a super, ridiculously profitable company. Your commentary on their "pitiful" computer sales are not cogent.

The Google bit is particularly goofy. No, "Google" doesn't even appear on the charts (you know -- the charts which Apple usually is within the top 2, often leading). Chromebooks do, sold by a wide variety of sellers, as a schoolhouse special. Their great for what they do.

I just don't see them making any decision that does not make the MacOS CLI less useful with each and every release since at least the big cat series, and the user pattern is changing with those changes.

IT's an trip the classic macos took before it and i think there is an signficance in apple returning to the MAcOS branding thats subly hinting that the days when OSX was an relatively open unix is ending.

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