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The year of the nix desktop may be fast approaching. The use of ChromeOS and MacOS has seen steady growth, on Mobile IOS and Android both have nix origins. As

by lumost 6y ago

The year of the nix desktop may be fast approaching. The use of ChromeOS and MacOS has seen steady growth, on Mobile IOS and Android both have nix origins. As a developer of primarily cloud based systems, I find using a windows desktop to be unusual - none of my familiar tools, expectations, and development practices fit with Windows. Based on the macbooks that I'm surrounded by at work, I'd have to imagine others feel similarly. https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/united-states-of-america https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/united-st...

UncleMeat 6y ago
If in the 90s you told a linux advocate that "we will achieve the year of the linux desktop by having everybody buy macs" they'd laugh. That doesn't count. OSX has unix at its heart but the open sourceness of the OS is the key thing that advocates want. OSX isn't open source.
- lumost 6y ago
  fair, it probably depends on what your goal is. OSX certainly relies on more open source code, components, and tooling than windows - but less than debian.
spideymans 6y ago
I know StatCounter isn't 100% accurate, but I'm stunned at OS X being at 27 percent usage share in the United States. I had always assumed OS X usage was still at about 10%, which is where it was a decade ago. I suspect we'll see this creep up even further in the coming years, if Apple releases cheaper MacBooks (~$700), in response to Apple Silicon lowering their manufacturing costs. They've dramatically lowered the costs of the entry-level iPhones, iPads and watches and I don't see why that same strategy wouldn't come to the Mac.
- lumost 6y ago
  I think that gets to a major risk of continued windows focus by Microsoft, in 5 years it's possible that Windows market share will be below 50% with most new software written for nix systems. History has not looked kindly on OS's in such an environment, and further market declines may be inevitable as windows begins to look like a legacy platform or a use case specific platform (Games). I'd have to imagine that Microsoft has been thinking of what their Desktop OS play would be at that point, allowing windows to simply die a slow and profitable death would threaten other business lines such as Gaming. Non-Apple hardware vendors will be looking for OSX like systems to compete with a possibly dominant OSX platform.

by lumost 6y ago

UncleMeat 6y ago

If in the 90s you told a linux advocate that "we will achieve the year of the linux desktop by having everybody buy macs" they'd laugh. That doesn't count. OSX has unix at its heart but the open sourceness of the OS is the key thing that advocates want. OSX isn't open source.

lumost 6y ago
fair, it probably depends on what your goal is. OSX certainly relies on more open source code, components, and tooling than windows - but less than debian.

spideymans 6y ago

I know StatCounter isn't 100% accurate, but I'm stunned at OS X being at 27 percent usage share in the United States. I had always assumed OS X usage was still at about 10%, which is where it was a decade ago. I suspect we'll see this creep up even further in the coming years, if Apple releases cheaper MacBooks (~$700), in response to Apple Silicon lowering their manufacturing costs. They've dramatically lowered the costs of the entry-level iPhones, iPads and watches and I don't see why that same strategy wouldn't come to the Mac.

lumost 6y ago
I think that gets to a major risk of continued windows focus by Microsoft, in 5 years it's possible that Windows market share will be below 50% with most new software written for nix systems. History has not looked kindly on OS's in such an environment, and further market declines may be inevitable as windows begins to look like a legacy platform or a use case specific platform (Games). I'd have to imagine that Microsoft has been thinking of what their Desktop OS play would be at that point, allowing windows to simply die a slow and profitable death would threaten other business lines such as Gaming. Non-Apple hardware vendors will be looking for OSX like systems to compete with a possibly dominant OSX platform.