It would seem to be bowing to what their customer base wanted (whether their customers realized it or not). Most of my personal/work devices are Windows and pri

It would seem to be bowing to what their customer base wanted (whether their customers realized it or not). Most of my personal/work devices are Windows and prior to the big change, on each one I'd have a virtual machine with a linux distro in it so that I could do some work that was outside of ASP.NET (which I'd do in Windows). Now, ASP.NET can be developed in OSX/Linux/Windows and they've cut out layers involved so that developers can work within Linux on their Windows machine. Is the goal to upsell you on Azure? Most likely. Nothing wrong with that though: every company that intends to make a profit wants you to use the thing that gives them said profit. The fact you can use the two previously mentioned things without any requirement to use Azure is probably what they should be measured on in regards to those two things. On the bright side, Azure is a pretty diverse setup whereas it could've been Windows Server w/ IIS and Windows Server w/ SQL Server instances as far as the eye can see. Another possible perspective is that Apple has more or less given a passing interest to OSX in recent years and Microsoft felt they could make inroads with developers using Mac products (that weren't there for iOS development. ie web). It's worked to some degree (anecdotally. Though the substantial enhancements to the OS on the Windows side have been at a higher clip than on the OSX side for a bit though) and been a driver for a bit of good faith with development audiences so they probably view it as a win-win. But they're not doing a great job of extinguishing (if that were indeed the goal) because Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code have both found their way onto OSX (VSCode on Linux too). Would seem nutty to bolster OSX's appeal if this were the same old Microsoft just under new management.