I read this article 20 years ago.
It’s got the same energy as the “year of the Linux desktop” meme. I think that the mobile space will be Apple-dominated first, then laptops will come later as the PC market naturally shrinks and starves off less-profitable players à la the current tablet market.
Yeah. It was embarrassing all those years we declared it the year of the Linux desktop, before. I’m glad we finally got there this year!
Good news! Save it for 20 years and read it again! 😁
I’m guessing there’s a bit of source bias here. I’ll buy that Windows won’t be dominant in 10 years, but defaulting to Apple doesn’t seem backed by the data presented.
Yeah, as the gap between paid OS and free ones narrows, we see the free ones in use in more and more contexts.
Cloud and phone went first, now it’s finally the year of the Linux desktop, again.
Yea, most enterprises that I know of are looking at VDI. I don’t think Apple has made any effort in that area?
Apple won’t dominate the corporate space because then they would have to support the corporate space. They know if they do that their products will be common, and they couldn’t charge the premium they do. Then the people that demand corporate support their Apple products wouldn’t be rebels sticking it to The Man. Would doctors and C-Level wannabes really feel special if they didn’t have to throw their weight around to get IT to accept Macs? If that common, dirty, IT troll just sauntered up from the basement with a fully supported Macbook Air ready to go, it would take all the “I feel SPECIAL” out of the experience. And that is what Mac users pay for.
Is that how apple users see themselves?
I’ve always seen them as gullible hipsters paying more than they need to because of the logo.
I refused to buy Apple products for 15 years. Recently I grabbed a whole set of them and honestly, there’s only one thing I can say. It just fucking works.
I’ve been using Linux/Windows for the better part of two decades and I’m just at a point where I don’t care to tinker anymore unless I have to, I just wanna have stuff that works especially when it’s related to work stuff. Apple stuff is just reliable in that sense, oh my Android phone decided to crash on itself? Yeah my iPhone has had 0 crashes all year I’ve owned it. My M2 Macbook Air has superior battery life and portability at a more reasonable price than pretty much any competitor on the market?
Yes certain Apple things are beyond stupid expensive, Hello Apple TV 4K 128gb being £180 on launch?
But when I want something to work and not have to think about it, the apple stuff fits that need.
I think Apple users typically fall into one of a few different categories:
- “I’m a creative/visionary”
- “I don’t really understand computers”
- “I need a native Unix command line”
At least in Enterprise IT, typically, I used to do IT at a small firm and the 2(?) directors with MACs very much liked having the special computer.
The current really large corp I work at, barely anyone has a MAC, and the like 1 I interacted with felt similarly
Unlikely…MS Office is still the default for many enterprises today. 365 Office online version is not convenient. OSX version is deliberately made worse to entice people to use Windows
Microsoft has done an excellent job achieving parity between Mac and Windows by making the Windows version worse, as well.
I just want you to know this brightened my day with a sensible chuckle.
Google Docs is fast becoming the standard office suite in a lot of organizations.
Maybe for newer organisations.
But not for large oranisations. And when some jobs depend on creating the shiniest powerpoint presentation in the world, MS Office is unlikely to go away for now.
Not even Office anymore, theyve got multiple levels of ERP systems linked in a with Azure resources for doing lots of core business functionality and automation which is becoming more and more a requirement, i.e. if your business can’t send/receive EDI you can’t sell to most major stores like Walmart/Kroger/etc.
What would you describe as large?
The company I work for is a multinational at this point and exclusively uses Google for Mail/Docs. We have I think 600 stores now across 12 countries.
I would love to use Linux on my work PC but our IT is too lazy to figure out how to put their corporate spyware on it.
I used Linux for my work PC for a year and had endless problems. If it was my personal pc that would be fine but I was wasting time that I should have been using to complete my work, instead spending that time debugging constantly changing problems
So your spare time is worth less than your working time? I feel the opposite way.
Ssshh. Let’s not give away that little hint - there may be bosses present.
I learned Linux on the boss’ dime and it created tons of career opportunities.
In my spare time nobody is going to ask me to justify why I delayed a meeting by 10 minutes because my screenshare wasn’t working
Mine has been super smooth as a workstation for 7 years. But I think that is the fragmentation issue with Linux. I chose a distro based off of a corporate one and random dude uses Hannah Montana Linux expecting same results.
Funny, that’s my daily experience using corporate windows boxes.
I think you’re born either able to use Linux trouble free or able to use Windows trouble free
Or you’re me, and can use neither trouble-free. I’m basically this man.
Unless Apple drops the price of their devices by at least a third, it’s not really going to happen.
Another thing to consider is that Jamf will certainly not be dominating the Apple MDM management solution arena in a decade either.
Companies with a mostly win estate with win infra, aren’t happy with paying another $40 per user, per year for Jamf and Intune will be making up a lot of ground for a one shop solution, even if management is not as featured or complex as what Jamf offers.
With the push to SaaS for so many enterprise apps you have a lot less lock in for windows as an OS.
My work uses a mix of Microsoft Office and LibreOffice on our machines. I doubt the latter will become an industry standard anytime soon, but I was honestly surprised to see them using it.
I hope so. Competition would make Windows a better product. Most of innovation that Windows has had in the last 10 years it’s all about getting telemetry and adding ads.
It would be good if the change was towards Linux, but it seems more likely the transition will be towards an increasingly restrictive Android, reflecting how phones have become people’s primary computing devices, so I’m not looking forward to it.
This is happening in my workplace. Almost all new hires request a Mac over windows
Would Linux not be a better call? Both upfront and maintenance cost would be much lower without question.
In practice not really. Linux is great on servers or specialized workstations, but for general end users it just doesn’t work out. I could get into why, but it essentially boils down to support and compatibility.
I migrated our company from Windows to RedHat and Macs, but I wouldn’t put macOS on a server* nor would I put RHEL on a sales guy’s laptop.
*except things like build servers.
Annecodotally I have run it for 7 years including high end CAD. it has been much more stable and predictable than Windows.
Wouldn’t a RHEL or similar distro which offers enterprise support be a good solution? Also, tech folks are very comfy on Linux as it’s how the internet basically operates. A distro with enterprise support and fully functional GUI that’s similar to windows seems like a solid solution to move from windows. What makes you hesitant to run RHEL on a sale employees computer?
When your app vendors write their apps for Windows, no. You could try moving everything in Citrix or VDI, but then you’re still running Windows and doing it with more costs.
Wine would allow for windows software to run on Linux. This would add additional potential software problems, but you wouldn’t need help from only Apple to fix em.
Maintenance cost would double with Linux. “Oh no my os updated because i clicked update when it said I had out of date apps and now my screen is just black when I boot”
Thats why you would have client machines on SUSE with autosnapshots for reverting back, or like proper IT don’t give client machines the root password and take user out of sudoers group.
Honestly, in my 12 years as a software engineer. Not once have I had a work computer I didn’t have full admin access to. It’s just not great to work like that. Additionally, in my line of work, I always need some random piece of software like Microsoft Teams, slack, zoom, discord, etc, for a meeting. This isn’t usual in Fortune 500 companies but in the smaller businesses I’ve been a part of, people will always have a new software requirement. Locked-down Linux clients might work for the slow sludge of mindless business that is Fortune 500 or large business but small businesses need to be able to do things quickly and stay flexible.
As.a tech company our systems are open for tinkering, but clients we do contract work for have fully locked down systems. No software install is possible, and software they do need has to be requested via their control center store app, if IT approves it it will show up in the software store. It is obviously as you say slower to turn things around, but IT ensures that attack footprint and system integriity is maintained. More companies are like this than not like this—when they have more than about 20 employees.
If you say so, I’m in the games industry and I’ve worked in about 40-100 employee studios for the last 10 years. Before that, I was at Comcast and T-Mobile as a software engineer. The games industry might just be an outlier because every employee is tech savvy.
Yeah, I think the difference besides tech savvy, is also development like jobs vs production work. production clients you want all the same and no user f@ckery
