[flawi]

Working for a pretty big corporation (20000ish employees), the reason for this I hear from our IT/Workplace Services team is that Apple laptops actually integrate with the existing Windows-centric IT infra reasonably well with regards to account management, hdd encryption, endpoint protection, etc. This is not true for really any flavor of Linux, or so I'm told. So it's either a HP ZBook or a Macbook, and a big chunk of our devs go with the Macbook when those are the choices.

[jerlam]

I worked for BigCorp (not FAANG), and developers chose Macs for exactly the opposite reason - they did not integrate into BigCorp's dysfunctional IT infrastructure because they were too new.

Over the years, BigCorp IT had deployed increasing amounts of corporate malware for various reasons. Users would be regularly treated to dialogs from various IT departments (accounting, security, inventory, licensing) demanding that they verify their employee number, job code, physical location, etc; security agents that scanned all disk activity and network traffic; inventory agents that make sure all software was properly licensed; and arbitrary software installations and upgrades that IT incorrectly believed everyone in the company needed.

With a Mac, none of these agents existed, so you didn't have to deal with your computer actively working against you. With newer forms of enterprise management, this overhead should be reduced on both Windows and Macs, but due to inertia all those agents will continue to be installed on Windows long after they are needed.

[veb]

I was so against Macs when I was younger. I'd only used Windows and FreeBSD for most of my teen years. So when I was 19, and went to Singapore to work... they used iMacs. I'm all like "ew" but my boss told me once I got used to it, I probably wouldn't wanna go back. He was right. I even bought the iMac home to NZ with me as my carry on luggage (those white iMacs) heh.

Though, for the very first time in a long time I had a job with a windows laptop early last year for about 6 months. Holy shit it was a nightmare - if it'd just been Windows, I'd have been fine, but every day there was some new bullshit IT had implemented. I spent so much time fighting that thing, or just being completely lost. The network even had its own MITM thing going on which really messed with vscode (thank god for win-ca extension) - I think they were scanning in real-time to make sure you weren't doing security breaches.

Regardless, it was so over the top it's not funny. This place had less than 20 people, but these insane IT overheads.

With my current job I have been given a top of the line XPS and I gotta say, that screen looks so much better than my 2020 MBP. It's really nice. A few of my colleagues have put Linux on it, but then they can't connect to work VPN, etc. I only use the laptop for connecting to our databases and I just code on my macbook. This is a far bigger company, and they have a great IT team with none of that silliness from the smaller company.

[flawi]

To clarify, no one is picking a Macbook because it integrates with the existing IT infra, we are simply not allowed to use anything that doesn't integrate with the various corporate malware. And since they couldn't get Linux to play nice with those requirements, it's not even offered as an option.

Our devs are picking Macbooks because it's the lesser pain in the butt, many would go with Linux if allowed.

[Delk]

Things like Office 365 are also still pretty much a hard requirement at lots of offices. More enterprisey projects can definitely require working with all kinds of moderately complex technical or non-technical documents in Word or Excel.

It may be possible to get it running on Wine or CrossOver Office, of course, but most generic Windows-centric corporations probably aren't going to buy Crossover, and "I can't send you a commented version of this document by today because I'm having a random compatibility issue with this non-commercial software combination that other Normal People don't need" isn't going to make you popular.

[gcthomas]

O365 works cross platform in the browser well enough for most windows-centric corps. I've got by happily for years with Vivaldi and Libreoffice, without Windows installed.