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The walls of Apple’s garden are tumbling down
(www.theverge.com)
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this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2024
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lol. No they aren’t.
Seriously, windows is about to release forced advertisements in the Start Menu. Windows 12 is going to be a shit show. People aren’t going to flock to Linux, they’re going to Apple. Think they have a lot of money now? Wait until they get more desktop market. They can afford to build another garden.
Say what you want about Apple, it’s probably true. But don’t pretend they don’t have gardens inside gardens.
The only way Apple will fall is if there is actual competition, and nothing is on the horizon.
The number of people who will leave windows over this stuff is trivial.
Apple has practically zero presence in enterprise (where one company can have 60,000 computers), and also practically zero in SMB.
Business software is written for windows. Even trying to use a Mac with the most basic office software is challenging - even if the exact same product exists in both.
People aren't flocking anywhere when their work machines are windows. Damn few people can be bothered with learning 2 ways to do things, especially when they're not interested in computing. I've been at this since before Mac existed, and while I can use OSX or iOS, I'm not wasting my limited learning time on something I rarely use, and can't really integrate with much of the rest I use.
Now let's look at some other arenas:
Legal - they all use a small set of document apps (which until recently was wordperfect), and some legal database apps. None of the database apps run on Mac as far as I've seen.
Engineering - there are practically no CAD apps for Mac. Some do exist, but again, even the ones that are on both Windows and Mac are problematic at best on Mac, typically unable to integrate with the back end.
Most people don't have the bandwidth to learn a new system just to avoid the shitty part of Windows (which only affects home users anyway). It takes less effort/time to figure out how to mitigate the Windows issues than to deal with a completely new system, that will also have issues integrating with other stuff they already have.
And they're not even trying as far as I'm concerned. Windows is dead easy to integrate something like device management software into or tie into central authentication or all sorts of enterprise goodies.
Apples enterprise software and integration is complete and utter trash. The it just works "magic" only applies to consumer things, the magic is gone the second you even think about doing anything remotely enterprise.
Got an Active Directory you want to integrate macOS with? Good luck. Want to use an apple alternative instead because you think it'll be better? Better get a time machine. Device management? Better get ready to jump through hoop after hoop for a maybe half working solution.
I always say, Windows is an enterprise OS with consumer features and MacOS is a consumer OS with (half assed) enterprise "features".
Yea, Apple very briefly started making effort to support enterprise in the 90's, but quickly gave up the effort. I don't remember it well, it may have been related to the PowerPC stuff they were doing with IBM (IBM dropped their support of the PowerPC project, unfortunately).
Wow, I've been in IT for a long time, and this is the best way I've ever seen to describe the difference.
Eh, it kind of depends imo. Apple's MDM is pretty great, they just don't offer any real alternatives to AD, Exchange, etc. and integrating Macs into a Windows environment definitely does make some of the "it just works" magic evaporate quickly.
For a small business willing to go all in and do everything the Apple way I can see it being quite attractive though. Managed Apple IDs through Apple Business Manager for use with iCloud, Automated Device Enrolment with zero-touch provisioning straight out of the box and a robust MDM solution like Jamf make for a pretty neat package. It's just not one that will appeal to every business, especially large ones or ones with a desire or requirement to keep things on-prem and in-house.
Apple definitely has a very long way to go to become any kind of real competition to Microsoft in the enterprise market, but with MS pushing more and more cloud stuff themselves (O365, Azure) I reckon it's only a matter of time before they start neglecting things like AD and Exchange. And more people using Apple at home means employees and decision makers will start wanting to use that stuff at work too, for better or worse.
I'm not saying Apple will dethrone MS or anything, in fact I don't think a future with Apple being a significant player in the enterprise market is particularly likely. But I think if MS screws up enough and Apple play their cards right, it's not impossible.
The issue in that whole proposition lies within this one single sentence
Nowadays, practically all companies are moving towards either SaaS, or in house web services. The pandemic has killed native enterprise apps, for better or for worse.
Windows only has decent presence because it's reasonably easy to integrated Windows machines into corporate structures. The moment Apple taps into that market, it's all over. We've seen that with Google basically ruining the school market for Microsoft by doing that, and it will happen again.
Counter point: I just got a new MacBook at work. It's an all windows enterprise. There are like 10 of us that got macs. The setup for them is kludgy because all of the tooling is for windows.
That said, Microsoft office and one drive is so much better to use because the "integration" isn't there...and it works like I want it to work.
It's hilarious to me that they've made their offering worse with all of their efforts to integrate 365 and onedrive into everything.
I think if apple just did a little towards the enterprise they'd take chunks of market share. Like having a macpro with a pic/cac card reader would be a good start.
Add to this lack of CUDA support, which is what pretty much all CAD runs on. Apple's Metal may be interesting, but that doesn't matter if the apps don't port to it.
It'll be especially interesting to see how AI plays out. If NVIDIA ends up winning (they're currently way ahead), it'll be the same issue as with engineering, but in more disciplines.
Oh, yea!
The other area I meant to mention related to engineering is external device control.
Things like specialized controllers for things like CNC, many of which won't even run on NT-based systems, and still have to run Windows 9x to have the DOS-level hardware control.
Do you know if they work at all on Linux? Just wondering what the path forward there is.
And yeah, we had an old Windows system with our pick and place machine because it really needed that specific version of Windows. I'm sure the same is true for all kinds of specialized hardware chugging along to this day in factories near you!
CUDA and AI stuff is very much Linux focused. They run better and faster on Linux, and the industry puts their efforts into Linux. CNC and 3D printing software is mostly equal between Linux and Windows.
The one thing Linux lacks in this area is CAD support from the big players. FreeCAD and OpenCAD exist, and they work very well, but they do miss a lot of the polish the proprietary software has. There are proprietary CAD solutions for Linux, but they're more industry specific and not general purpose like AutoCAD.
Good to hear!
My 3d printer works, but I wasn't sure about CNC because of my experience with pick-n-place machines having poor support. It seems the more industrial you go, the fewer options you have for support.
Well those people will just be ok with windows then. Heck, some people still run windows xp.
A good portion of windows users are corporate/business users. They're not going anywhere.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/04/german-state-gov-ditching-windows-for-linux-30k-workers-migrating/
We’ll see.
As someone in German Government who has written a thesis on OSS in government:
Happens regularly, on a small scale, but almost always eventually leads to a rollback to Windows. People are discontent with the solutions on Linux since they have to get used to something else, and the aging governmental workers and exactly very keen on things changing.
The City of Munich had a similar program of switching to Linux before, only took Microsoft to open an office in the city to revert on those plans.
The federal government recently finished rolling out a centralised, unified client around all of their ministries and other institutions. Which OS? Guessed it, Windows 10.
Dont get me wrong, having something like the French Police would be amazing, but the highly federal nature and old workforce of government make it super unlikely for Linux to have a proper chance. Taking into consideration the lack of suitable employees to drive forward such a change, the lack of money at local government levels and the fact that most of the specific software required doesn't have a version for Linux doesn't fill me with hope.
Office suites are a tricky one. The shitstorm when MS changed it to the ribbon UI was insane. Business users really do not like change. That and the minor incompatibilities in document loading to LibreOffice. I mean, it's like 99.9% of the way there, but that 0.1% is guaranteed to be in the middle of one of those massive spreadsheets that absolutely fucking everything hinges on.
Still, Office has been going in-browser for a while now. They might at least get off Windows, even if they're stuck with Office.
Let’s hope it gains traction and you can write another paper on the success of oss in government.
I want more entities to switch to Linux like that, but that's unlikely in the near future. Most offices have Windows professional or enterprise (LTSC) which don't have most of the bullshit regular Windows has.
Yeah, exactly. And the Lock-In-Effect is huge, too. You only need to have a piece of required software that doesn't have a Linux version (we have this situation) and you'll be stuck for a looong time.
Hmm interesting thought. But how many people are going to actually buy new computers when they don't get updates? And of course how many will keep trucking with out of date windows? So for the one that buy a new computers, how many will just buy windows again? How many will have a tech savvy relative that can install Linux for them (because they can't afford a new computer)? How many will go to Chromebook because it's cheaper? Personally I never understood luxury brands, which I consider Apple to be.
Chromebooks aren’t really a threat. People who can use chromebooks as a daily driver probably already are. Also, most of the hardware is absolute garbage.
Apple isn’t all luxury. The Mac mini as fast af and starts at $599.
Apple just doesn’t have a “shit” category, like many other manufacturers.
Sure, a lot of people will choose Linux, but that won’t be a majority.
As much as I don't want to give LTT credit, I think Linus has a point with Chromebooks. Google is playing the long game with them. Students almost exclusively use them these days, and anecdotally, most of them are getting chromebooks and the like for college now that they're getting to that age. That's at least been the case for almost every family member I've had that's started college in the last 5 years.
It's only going to continue as the average Chromebook legitimately is becoming more powerful, and Steam compatibility is improving. You're going to see a whole lot of people who see no need for a PC/mac.
Which is good in the short term and bad in the long term imo.
It's good because it gives Microsoft and Apple competition, so they'll be forced to adapt to these users who have found that they don't need the desktop app stuff. More services will move to the cloud (like Office), which means less vendor lockin for client devices.
In the longer term, it means more stuff is in the cloud, which means less individual control over their data. That means vendor lockin must shifts from client devices to services, but now you can't just use a compatibility layer like WINE if you want to switch. So we'll then play a cat and mouse game with regulations like the GDPR as companies innovate new ways to screw you over.
So yeah, I'm not sure how I feel about Chromebooks. I'm personally teaching my kids to use Linux (if they want to play games, they use my Linux machines), so hopefully there's enough people pushing against everything going to the cloud to maintain some amount of competition to keep them in check.
Most people just need a phone.
In general life? Sure. Students? Absolutely not, at least not once you get to college. Sure you can get away with only using school computer labs, but trying to do homework without a computer is borderline impossible these days. Most online homework sites either outright don't work on mobile or are such a pain in the ass that they may as well not.
For a while recently, I had my laptop not working properly so had to use just a phone before the needed part arrived. And after that, I refuse to believe someone could willingly and longterm live with just a phone as a primary device. No. This is actually frustrating.
Apple definitely has a shit category, it’s the entry level with 8GBs of RAM. Completely unusable unless you’re only running a single app at a time.
My neighbour randomly asked me a few months ago if I was familiar with Linux and if I could could get him some boot USB or something. I got him one with several options. He didn't have any Linux experience before, and isn't exactly a nerd.
It's much easier nowadays for someone to get familiar and use Linux than it was before, and it's much cheaper than reworking your whole tech ecosystem to accomodate Apple's monopoly.
My elderly neighbor needed a computer to do accounting, I set her up with Mint on a T430 w/ LibreOffice and told her I'd giver her free support till the laptop died.
5 years on and the only time I've had to fulfill my side of the bargain was when her printer was out of paper and she couldn't find her eye glasses to read the error message.
Hahahah, omg that's awesome.
To me this user exemplifies where Linux shines: in limited-use-case scenarios (not to say it's inflexible, just that support increases quickly with increased use-case complexity).
The more general-use needed, the more technical skill is required.
This user has a small set of specific requirements, so it's pretty trivial to get them running on a Linux distro, and it's a great application of what Linux brings to the table. System management will be minimal.
In some cases this is true.
In addition to the other great points in this thread, Apple has a cost barrier that other operating systems don't.
In an economic climate where everything is getting more expensive, a consumer isn't going to fork out $800+ on a MacBook or an iPhone without first actively wanting to be part of the ecosystem, especially if the hardware they have gets the job done.
The reason Apple isn't growing as fast as it's competitors right now is exactly that. Apple is expensive to get into. No amount of enshitification on other OS's is going to change that.
They had cheaper periods and series in the past. eMac and such.
Being more expensive is their competitive advantage. For people who consider this a sign of social status.
But they are a company with the goal of making money, so if changing that part of their image seems more profitable, they'll do it.
Ok well,
Anyone who considers apple products a status symbol already has bought in and won't be swayed one way or the other by windows becoming worse.
Anyone who actually understands technology knows that regardless of how many different apps or environments apple OS's provide, you are always operating in a closed system with the tools they allow. Whereas an operating system like android, or Linux, or (at least for now) windows, your options for the capability of a tool are limited only by what exists or what you have the capability to write.
In short, apple isn't an OS that technologically literate people flock to as an exclusive option.