Every enterprise I have worked at had both linux and mac available to developers...

MagnumOpus · on Oct 9, 2017

"Developers" are a miniscule share of "enterprise". We are talking about the billion computers on corporate office workers' desks, not about the maybe-a-million computers of web/network/systems developers.

Counter-anecdote: every place I worked at including 4-5 major companies in various industries had compulsory windows desktops for everyone. The few of us that also had a Linux (or AIX/HP-UX/...) machines that we did our work on, SSHd into those machines.

pjmlp · on Oct 9, 2017

I never worked on an enterprise with GNU/Linux worstations on their IT policy, on some companies IT tolerated rebel developers provided they took care 100% of integration issues with the company network and official tools.

Macs are usually only available to upper management, unless required for iOS development, in which case they are part of a pool shared among project teams.

dagw · on Oct 9, 2017

Is this not your experience?

Not at all. Linux can sometimes be made available on servers if necessary, but if you want Linux on your desktop you have to use a VM (ideally without telling IT). Never worked at a large place where Macs where readily available. Macs used to be more popular ~10 years ago or so with the marketing and communications people doing a lot of DTP and design work, but even that seems to have greatly decreased.

jmkni · on Oct 9, 2017

In my experience, it’s depressingly common for companies to have one single Mac that they dust off once a year to test something in Safari.

jeff_petersen · on Oct 9, 2017

In my (bigcorp) experience, its all windows all the way with macs available only to developers who have a need (iOS dev usually).

And don’t forget that developers are a tiny minority of employees.

megaman22 · on Oct 9, 2017

As seemingly ubiquitous as Macbooks are, their market share has never really budged. It's been 3-5% for the entirety of the OS X era.

jorvi · on Oct 9, 2017

That's because there has never been a <$999 MacBook. If you purely start to look at the Ultrabook segment then MacBooks have an absolutely staggering market share.

pjmlp · on Oct 9, 2017

I seldom see any Macs around in most southern European countries, but I do see ultrabook PCs running Windows like the Asus ones.

blackoil · on Oct 9, 2017

Developers make a very small percentage of overall enterprise market.

EpicEng · on Oct 9, 2017

What OS were the other 98% (i.e. non-devs) of employees using?

herbst · on Oct 9, 2017

Usually Mac in my experience because nobody on their right mind would bother with Windows in a working environment.

_jcwu · on Oct 9, 2017

Except people who do .NET development, no? I wish I could use Linux, but I can't since I am working on WPF stuff.

EpicEng · on Oct 10, 2017

Then I guess the vast majority of people are insane because Mac use in Enterprise is essentially non-existent.

herbst · on Oct 10, 2017

To be fair in my limited experience it is true. I live and work and Switzerland, the majority of customers i faced with, i.e. medium to bigger companies, universities and gov agencies all used Macs. I travelled as Digitalnomad, and went to plenty meetups around Startups, Entrepreneurship and other not 100% tech things. Clear mac dominance as well.

However i work with Rails, Python and fancy things. I know if i would look into .NET/suit wearing side of things, things would look very different.