How Apple killed the Linux desktop

Quoting:It's hard to say exactly what percentage of desktop and laptop computers run Apple OS X, ...

Wait a minute. You mean to tell me that Apple keeps no sales records? If you buy an Apple computer, aren't you running OSX on it? Unless, of course, you put Linux on it instead. The article then goes on to claim that:

Quoting:OS X has been more successful than Linux, ...

And they trot out the staid 1% myth. Oh, I know where they're getting those statistics now. [sarcasm] From the Linux sales records. [/sarcasm] Yeah, that's it.

I actually believe Linux on desktops/laptops is more prevalent than OSX. The point is that sales records don't reflect market penetration of a free operating system. Oh, and I have seen my share of corporate Linux desktop use. Corporate Mac use? Not so much.

All I know is that, when it comes to Rails development, I see a whole lot of Mac, a little bit of Linux (sometimes just me), and pretty much no Windows.

Which -- hey! -- seems to highlight one reason why Rails isn't taking the corporate world by storm...

Corporate penetration sometimes requires that computers go into dirty environments. Replacing a factory's PC's would be far less expensive than replacing a factory's Macintoshes.

And why run Macs in the office, if the factory floor is running PC's?

What flies and doesn't fly in corporate environments has little to do with common sense and/or what is, in fact, the best choice. I worked for years for a VERY big player in Silicon Valley and saw many senseless changes and choices. This company originally was HP-UX based, and may still be. But, one entire division was given free reign to do as it pleased. Most of the engineering depts went PC, while most of the business depts went Apple. The Windows-based IT pushed us to a multi-million dollar customization of Oracle for our DB. Macs still fit. Eventually, a major engineering software change killed off all the Apple boxes and they were sold to employees. The Oracle DB was NEVER as efficient as the HP-UX system. Most old time employees (me raise hand) hated it. The funny part was, the cad-cam doc control software (Windows based) that killed off the Macs was chosen by a VP who bought it merely cuz it was being peddled by an old college chum, not cuz it was the best software choice. When I left, my division's IT dept was a Win/Orc nightmare which some ppl figured out how to circumvent to utilize the main company's still extisting Unix based IT network, though it was highly frowned upon. I can't say what this company, still very much a major player, is now dong, despite 80% of it still Unix based when I left in '98. Two yrs later, now in retirement, I tossed my Windows boxes and moved to Linux. I wouldn't use an Apple anything, even at gunpoint. ;)

notbob, do you ever pause to take a breath?

Nah! Too old and curmudgeonly. Gotta get it all out there before I kick. ;)