this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2024
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Mine was mainly at startups that did big data and open source software, and the only folks in the org who used Windows were generally the accountants.
Yeah, during my period in Tech Startups I did see a bit more of usage of Macs than in other places (such as Finance, Software Products, Software Consultancy and even Publishing), but always felt it was driven by the whole halo of "fashionability" around Apple Products, which isn't really a rational reason.
In my experience Mac use is also more likely in people doing Frontend work than Server-side work, maybe because the latter is not at all about visuals and most server-side work targets Linux so it's way simpler to just have Linux in your workstation.
Then again I've been using Linux since the 90s so maybe I'm biased ;)
A big study by IBM showed that Mac users are more productive and cost less to support than Windows. A company won't buy things for their foot soldiers that is "fasionable" like they will for the execs. But they'll definitely do it if it means they need to hire fewer IT support staff.
In my experience the backend guys are more likely to use Linux compared to other folks, but a lot of them still used a Mac because they didn't need to do a bunch of work to get Zoom or Teams working.
Having also worked with end-users, I suspect the result of that study from IBM is due to how the users that push to get a Mac tend to be more advanced end-users than your average corporate drone - big companies love to standardize and that means everybody gets the same (with the notable exception of upper management) which is almost invariably all Windows, so there's a huge bulk of "just proficient enough with computers to do their work" people using Windows.
That said, I can see you point for backend guys chosing Mac over Linux because of the integrating headaches they would otherwise have with closed source mandatory corporate tooling: I myself have in a professional environment a far lower threshold to spend time mucking around in the OS to get something I need working than I do at home.