I think that Microsoft is focusing on "much bigger fish," these days, than "Office." Many of these newer and more profitable things are "highly networked," and for most of Microsoft's customer base they can safely assume that the target platform is going to be Windows. They own and control that "basement layer," and so can simply put whatever they need into it. The customer gets "something that works."

Now that hardware these days has become both cheap and plentiful, that's a reasonable assumption. In my office right now I've got "one of each." Linux, Macintosh, Windows. Each one does what it does best, and I'm really only interested in what each one does. "As long as it works." (One of the three was purchased at a Goodwill store!)

Good news, everyone:
My Windows desktop will be replaced next week, for the first time since 1996 I won't have a Windows desktop anymore.

Bad news, everyone:
I still don't think Linux was superior. (I bought a Mac. And yes, I know what I said in 2018.)

Well, Mac OSX is Unix too!

Unlike Linux, it actually IS Unix.

To each his own, of course.

We might discuss about what "superior" means, and consider its dependence on point of view and personal taste. You'll probably have a beautiful, well polished and reliable system with no rough edges. Also, you'll get an intrusive company like Apple in return. As far as I'm concerned I prefer the spirit of free software, and I even learned to love its rough edges, because what I get in return has no price.

My main and newest machine is 10 years old, has seen a few iterations of Slackware, and with some periodical hardware cleanup (mostly from dust) is running like the first day. It was even a very low-end machine when I assembled it. I guess I couldn't install any supported Windows release on it, as it would be considered "obsolete". I think that throwing away perfectly working machines, because of software-induced obsolescence, is one of the worst stupidities of the consumerist world, and we will have to pay for it, some day soon.

At least that's something that Apple got right: Trade in your old machine, they'll recycle it as good as they can, you'll get a new machine with a notably lower price tag.

Yeah, I heard something about that. If they do it right that's of course better than having heaps of electronics parts landing in a landfill and poisoning the surroundings. However, as long as the machine works, or can be repaired with a reasonable effort, why destroy it? There are a lot of iMacs around, for example, that can run Linux just fine, way after Apple support for them ceased. There just isn't a culture, as nobody other that some geeks seem to be interested in making it real. Unfortunately, rich countries are inherently waste-countries.

Sure, you can just keep using your old Mac as long as its hard drive is still running, but the longer you do that, the less Apple is willing to recycle. So essentially you have a choice between long use and less waste. Less waste seems to me to be the wiser choice.

You can definitely have both worlds. At least in pre-2010 iMacs, the hard drive can be replaced with a standard one: there's no need to buy it from Apple. The same is true for RAM. I did it on a few of those machines so far, which are now happily running Slackware, with good performance by the way. When the entire machine happens to be cooked and nothing can be done anymore, then it can be sent to recycling through the appropriate services (depending on where you live). Apple's choice is merely commercial, unfortunately, and has nothing to do with saving resources or protecting the environment. That's plain greenwashing, so that the customer can wash his conscience too. I'm not moralizing or being radical here, I'm just stating the facts.

You are probably right. For consumers, Apple's approach makes sense though - if you own a Mac, you'll probably upgrade it with another Mac one day, so you get both a massive price reduction and "free" recycling in an Apple Store of your choice. I won't disagree that - from Apple's perspective - it is a bargain as well, as people basically donate free hardware to them.

In modern Macs, you can't just replace your hard drive and RAM with nothing but a screwdriver anymore, even the European Union's "right to repair" is not too helpful here; this is not an Apple-specific issue either.

Interesting discussion, and thanks for this more up-to-date information about Apple's (and other's) policies. Things are clearly getting out of control (literally) and consumers should contrast such trends, by boycotting those products and companies. But I know I'm dreaming here, as most consumers are simply now aware of anything we are talking about here (they stop at "Apple is green", and of course this thread's title says it all). Apple (especially) has also managed to create what seems to be an uncritical and quasi-religious following of customers. I'm not saying that all customers are like that, but again, it's a global, and I'd say dramatic, problem.

I would say that I'm not "Apple-religious", although the number of Apple devices I own is indeed increasing. Apple does tell a good story, probably a better story than all other technology companies could ever tell, and their devices - shiny, but expensive - are more than just external advertisement carriers (unlike Google's); and they just work. I assume that LQ has a handful of users who demand to be able to hand-wire everything, including their smartphones, and Apple won't cater them well. I, for one, want to be able to get stuff done without having to care too much about the underlying system and its quirks - which is why a Mac is not automatically a worse choice than just another choose-your-system PC.

(Just to not leave the topic too much: This was also true for Windows not too long ago, but hardware does - and did - not live forever, and a new Windows PC is not notably cheaper than a Mac mini anymore.)

You have a point, of course, as most people are not interested in building their own machine, installing software, configuring it. Most users of free software, on the other hand, do have the same basic requirements as Windows or Apple customers: getting work done. On top of that, a whole range of possible additional motivations, like technical interest, freedom, choice, cost, extending a machine's useful life, etc. Some people, not technically inclined, actually use Linux systems built and configured by others: that's where I think both worlds can meet.

I am not "Apple religious" either but use their systems exclusively because for me, they just work with zero fuss. Nothing is perfect and from 1998 to about 2009 or 2010, I exclusively used Linux. My problem is OCD: I could never be settled on a distro or on a desktop. So, having been a Windows hater since 1993, I took the Apple plunge and removed all choice. Silly, perhaps, but now I get things done and don't fret over whether to distro hop or which window manager or DE to use. I still use Linux daily at work and have a few VMs I use in my home "lab" so I have not totally abandoned it.

I do love Linux and the power it puts in the user's hands. I do not love the utter lack of integration (calendar, contacts, notes, etc) and having to cobble together third party services to get those things across devices. Apple absolutely excels at that so that is another selling point for me. I can get those things if I work a bit so that's not a total show stopper.

I have been an Apple user – literally – "since their earliest beginnings." (Yes, I own an "Apple-1 motherboard." No, it is not for sale.")

However, instead of dumpster-diving into "theological debates," I think that it is very impressive how – obviously leveraging upon Steve Jobs' (RIP) "NeXT," they were able to seamlessly leverage a [still...] open-source Unix® kernel ("Mach") as the basis of their brand-new system. It certainly was a very impressive achievement, and also one which has since enabled them to pass over several (very major!) architectural evolutions, the latest being "Apple Silicon."

>> In fact, they were able to sustain their "pre-OS/X" customer base – seamlessly(!) – over the very first of these revolutionary "evolutions," which I personally(!) experienced.

"In an entirely different way," theirs is also "a testament to the business power of open source." When they made their "radical shift," they selected an existing open-source project, as their foundation ... and to this day they continue to support it "open source."

I certainly find it advantageous to – in some cases – work with a machine that is "natively Unix®." However, I still maintain multiple machines. ("They're cheap enough, these days." Koff-koff... whodathunkit that they would ever be 'cheap?'")

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Meanwhile – Microsoft in its early days chose a different path. Perhaps because they based their original (primitive(!) microcomputer) business based on the powers of "the DEC PDP-10," they followed the diverging "PDP/RSTS-E/VAX (yes, I remember it ... koff koff ...) path forward," and also achieved success.