[cryptos]

Windows reputation is declining, so the operating system might be the actual crisis. Linux with modern desktops (e.g. Gnome 3) might fill the gap, but the market is far from broad adoption. Promoting and improving Linux desktop and apps would be a long endeavour, but betting only on Windows which degrades to a cloud and AI advertising surface might be fatal.

[p_ing]

Windows 11 has 1 Billion+ installs. That's not a decline and hardly a crisis. That's a huge install base.

[nirava]

While that's true, I also think these things tend to happen as a gradual build up to the tipping-point effect where the zeitgeist shifts so suddenly that a massive player is suddenly irrelevant.

Microsoft is structurally incapable of making Windows better. Intel is intrinsically incapable of making x86 better (enough to matter). x86 hardware manufacturers are in a price race to the bottom, and there's no way around that.

Apple doesn't have any of those problems. Instead, more and more young people can afford and aspire to get a Mac. They want to buy software that works on the mac, and they'll want to write software for the Mac. The network effect compounds.

[bigyabai]

I swear that I read this comment in 2019, and it's still wrong today. Young people want iPhones, go look at Apple's revenue breakdown. iPhones and iPhone accessories dwarf Mac sales, the only comparable product in terms of revenue is the iPad. There is no evidence that Apple Silicon has changed that B2C story.

In the broader B2B sense, Apple lost pole-position to Nvidia. They're not the ecosystem kingmaker they once were, and their ARM architecture is failing to subsume demand for their competitors. The "Private Compute" Mac-based servers are going terribly according to reports, and their contribution to the chip shortage has even driven them to collaborate with Intel Foundry Services: https://www.macrumors.com/2025/11/28/intel-rumored-to-supply...

[nirava]

I think it's truer now than it was in 2019. Don't you think? This doesn't have to be a binary thing.

[p_ing]

The zeitgeist exists on forums like this. Outside where people touch grass now and then, they largely don't care.

x86 OEMs are a race to the bottom because that's how the PC market has been for eons as PCs are a tool, not a status symbol, but how has x86 not 'gotten better'? It's significantly more battery friendly than it has ever been by a long margin, matching the M-series.

[fsloth]

This.

Ofc a huge chunk of that is in companies but I'm fairly sure there are at least two windows 11 machines per one mac in consumer segment as well.

[halapro]

It's just momentum. You buy windows because you have windows. You buy windows because there's not really much of a choice. You have windows because you're not going out of your ways to reconfigure hundreds of laptops at your company just for your employees to be less comfortable with Linux.

Now introduce a choice… and things might change.

With the vast majority of software nowadays living in the browser, your OS matters less and less, especially for a business that buys machines for its employees.

[fsloth]

As OS matters less that’s probably not going to entrench Microsoft less. Their relationship with OEM:s is not market based but a two way relationship.

At this point I would not be surprised if MS started to subvent the PC manufacturers to favour Windows over Linux if that ever comes to that.

[bigfishrunning]

> At this point I would not be surprised if MS started to subvent the PC manufacturers to favour Windows over Linux if that ever comes to that.

I've always assumed this has been happening since the 90s.

[fsloth]

I would have expected MS has charged some fee for Windows but honestly no clue.

I'm sure there are readers with actual insight here :)

[theshrike79]

There's an anecdote about flies and shit there somewhere =)

[system2]

There is no way all these corporations will change their infrastructure. Nearly impossible.

[creshal]

OTOH, client Windows is the smallest and least important building block in it. Microsoft is helpfully also setting all their native apps on fire too and replacing them with webslop that runs equally poorly on MacOS, ChromeOS and Linux as it does on Windows 11, so the biggest concern is (A)AD integration and centralized management… and all three are decently manageable these days. If Microsoft didn't throw in the Windows licenses for free, more orgs would already be looking at ditching Windows 11, and if it keeps getting worse, even that won't look like a good deal any more.