And yet the game Overwatch doesn't have an OSX port so I have windows 10 setup as a dual-boot option. It seems that Microsoft has correctly deduced that users don't really give a fuck. They'll throw a hissy fit, they'll make all sorts of blog posts, but at the end of the day the majority are still staring at a windows 10 installation screen and dealing with it.
Anything regarded as "industry standard" in some quasi-niche engineering field.
I guess that doesn't count as home use. Personally, I've been on Linux for over a decade. I don't feel like I'm missing out on any "killer apps", but there's always some odd bit of software that only works on Windows - like the freeware RC helicopter simulator I use. Wine's great.
It's just the path of least resistance for most people.
It's a program that's a combination of a universal file sharer, screenshotter, image editor, screen recorder (which can output gif) and a seriously unbelievable suite of tools like OCR, image combiners, a QR generator, etc.
When I say universal file sharer, I mean everything. It uploads to different sites based on the filetype, be it drive for files, gifycat for .mp4's, pastebin for text, whatever. And there isn't a linux equivalent. Which sucks.
Unfortunately I need to stay with Windows for the moment only for Ableton Live, which is IMO the best Pro Audio/Music creation tool. I can't run it in a VM because only basic sound features work in a VM (I'm using a PCI soundcard, actually thinking about it now, maybe USB3 soundcards could work well in a VM?).
Also Photoshop is pretty much the gold standard for image editing, but I could be happy running that in a VM.
I would add VS to that, and potentially Unity/Unreal? Also I imagine corporate and government environments that use windows might also hamstring their developers into using it.
> As for VS - that was never really a consideration to stay on the platform for a lot of developers.
By what means are you measuring these considerations? Do you have some sort of citation?
As a developer, the biggest reasons for me to stay on Windows are Office, IIS, SQL Server and Visual Studio. Nothing on any other platform comes close the the usability of these.
Furthermore, knowing these products really well gets you a lot of easy work...because almost every business on the planet runs Windows.
Anyway there's no reason to single out Microsoft here since both Apple and Google are some mixture of anti-choice, anti-freedom and anti-privacy. And the EFF wants you to quit all of them too. They recommend moving to the equivalent of a hippie commune where you'll enjoy spending time milking your own cows instead of feeding other companies' cash cows.
Office is also on the Mac. As for the other apps you mentioned, well, that's very subjective because I completely disagree with your assessment that nothing even comes close on any other platform. To imply that IIS and SQL Server are best of breed is ridiculous.
Also, VS isn't exactly a compelling reason to stay on Windows. Last time I installed VS 2015 it sprayed 30+ GB's of files all over my SSD and installed about 30-40 apps in the process. To say VS 2015 is a bloated pig would be an insult to bloated pigs everywhere.
OK well reality backs up my point of view because every small, medium and large business in the world is running Windows so that they can use all of the business software that was written with VS to run on Windows, IIS and SQL Server.
We're not talking about best of breed for "the cloud" either. SQL Server and IIS are absolutely best of breed for in-house, self-hosted business apps.
And your big complaint about VS 2015 is lacking any kind of substance. Do you measure the quality of all software solely on how much disk space it takes up or is that one you just reserve for Microsoft? I run 6 or 8 instances of VS2015 at a time and my Windows machine stays lightning fast. Meanwhile, I run one instance of Xcode (all I'm allowed on OS X, on my Mac Pro) and it's dog slow.
You didn't name anything you think is better either. Says a lot.
Do you think it will ever reach parity with the Windows version though?
Microsoft is acutely targeting devs who build cloud apps for the public or for very large organizations with the Linux version of SQL Server. Devs like me who build apps that are self-hosted (almost always in-house) for small and medium sized businesses. My customers need all that Windows integration including (among many, many other considerations) Windows authentication, Windows file sharing and security, SQL Server Integration Services (none of which are probably available on Linux...SSIS for sure) and they need it running on Windows because that's all they know or want to know.
There are certainly more developers like me than their are of the other type.
