I mostly put this down to bad salesmanship/C*s tending to be effectively technological cavemen...perhaps there are backroom deals we are not privy to, though.
Subjectively, I am under the impression that, in the enterprise desktop space, Linux is a more serious competitor to Windows than mac OS is.
For example in public administration: At one point the city government of Munich had replaced over 12000 desktops from Windows to Linux [1], and you keep seeing ideas to do similar things pop up in political party manifestoes and position papers like [2].
It is also not uncommon for large universities and research facilities to run on Linux.
Meanwhile, an enterprise running hundreds or even thousands of mac OS devices is something I've never heard of.
I think, in the past, enterprises were a bit more locked-in than they were now because they ran Windows software that they custom-developed, or off the rack but very niche and available for Windows only. But with the trend over the last two decades having gone towards writing that kind of software as web-based software, I think that element of lock-in is gradually but steadily decreasing as well.
The problem is that, once this competitive threat against Microsoft reaches critical mass, it's a bit too easy for Microsoft to counter the threat by simply backpaddling on the trash. In the meantime they just want to milk the cash cow as much as they can possibly get away with.
De-trashing an OS is easy. Meanwhile, they are working hard to make sure that Windows is the OS that runs the widest array of software on the widest array of hardware, which is not so easy (anything Windows from ancient to modern, Windows subsystems for Linux and Android). Windows emulation on Linux is also making massive progress, thanks in part to Steam, but I guess that structurally, it will always be easier for Windows to emulate Linux than for Linux to emulate Windows.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux [2] https://www.transformation.gouv.fr/files/presse/Declaration_...
Their thinkpad business had been spun off, the thinkpad exclusivity contract had run out, and IBM were in a "we already give too much money to MS" mood at the time. No idea how far that went.
They also had a RHEL workstation-based distro you could put on your thinkpad (with a few tens of thousands of users on that IIRC), or if you were particularly adventurous, a 'layer' that could be installed on Ubuntu (that had a few thousand users) or Debian(I was one of 22 people doing that at the time!))
as a former sysadmin in these places, it's not easy to lock down macOS down - and less so to ensure that compliance is being enforced. compliance is huge, far more important than what platform you run on. MS makes this easy, and Linux support is mainly for labs, etc, who get put on a separate network most of the time and locked down.
account management on linux and mac is a nightmare, and just simple to relegate to AD. for all its problem, GPO makes this cakewalk.
Your experience doesn't match with reality. There are multiple sources available describing the growth in macOS usage. One that's quoted in news reports, but hidden behind a paywall, is an IDC report from 2021[1].
It describes macOS penetration at ~23% in 2020 up 6% from 2019. The is supported by descriptions of the impact on enterprise end-user computing management teams that historically have only supported Windows. You can even look at the growth of Intune, and the breadth of acquisitions by Microsoft, to see that Microsoft is very likely supporting 1000s of mac devices.
An important element of how we got here is mobile. Windows had made huge investments in configuration management while OS X was an oddball. Managing it required a different set of tools. iOS and Android adoption in many enterprises caused an end run around the end-user computing gatekeepers from 2007-2012 with a proliferation in MDM solutions.
This eventually led to standardization of so-called "modern" configuration management API/interfaces/tools. The door was opened to more Mac adoption through Apple Business Manager while admins had already adopted modern management tools that covered Windows and mobile.
This doesn't discount the challenge with some users needing to use legacy Windows software. Once upon a time this was a strong moat. For years, IT have been under pressure to make this work on mobile (where feasible) which has cut down the blockers on macOS or Linux usage.
[1] https://www.idc.com/research/viewtoc.jsp?containerId=US46965...
Some companies tried to use free alternatives to Excel, but there were always compatibility issues when customer or partner use Excel.
I think if someone had created 1:1 alternative to MS Office (with all its quirks and bugs), then switching to Linux would likely be a no brainer.
Even Linux.
I’m surprised XFCE isn’t pushed more as an option.
Doing a quick check, Red Hat still has a "Workstations" product for RHEL:
https://www.redhat.com/en/technologies/linux-platforms/enter...
Hmmm, I thought they used to have a non-"workstation" desktop oriented flavour too, but maybe that's been discontinued or rolled into the Workstation thing above.
There have been working comparability layers for the various hard-to-run on anything but Windows software appliances, but a major sticking point has been the GPU support (which keeps the software running well).
I don't think this will be true forever though, graphics drivers continue to make strides in being more open, often to the benefit of the various organizations writing or purchasing the gpus/firmware/drivers.