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Comment by vazark | Hacker News Reader

As long as people keep buying them, devs have no choice but to adapt

Devs always have a choice, but almost always choose to make more money. Nobody is putting a gun to anyone's head forcing them to develop for macOS.

And many do abandon Apple.

The other mainstream platform is Windows. Apple only needs to beat Microsoft.

Unless they lower their prices, that will never happen, 17% desktop market share worldwide, with Windows around 76%.

Not everyone lives in countries where Apple prices are acceptable, even for regional developer salaries.

If you target those countries, then you need to live with Windows.

Which is most of the world, as mentioned, 76%.

Ask Valve how it is going with Linux native games, or Apple with the Game Porting Toolkit.

Apple sells hardware and skims software sales on their platform. They are not particularly interested in moving most of their sales to the software side. They are, first and foremost, a hardware company that sells mobile devices, some peripherals (such as TVs and smart speakers) and, incidentally, computers (which are pretty much the best anyone can buy these days).

Pity that software is not up to the premium prices of said hardware.

Also that how Apple fans are so quick to forgive shanky keyboard and swelling battery experiences at premium prices.

Yes they are primarily iDevices company nowadays, which yet again isn't that big when looking into worldwide market share.

I have been using corporate issue Macs for more than a decade now and, while the software isn’t perfect, it’s a pretty good Unix that leaves nothing to be desired as a workstation OS. It’s a bit rough around the edges, with some apps getting closer in feature set to their mobile counterparts (and thus less flexible), but they are still good compared to their Windows and Unix competitors. Apple Music is still a decent media player, and TV is decent for video.

And their terminal is one of the very few that respect double-wide and double-height DEC modes, which work great for scripts.

Of course, it is a UNIX.

Not everyone across the globe has the privilege of having corporate issued Macs, hence Windows rules the desktop, when their own wallets are asked upon.

In fact, many companies have laptops pools for macOS devices, mostly used during iDevices projects, only assigned to teams members if they are on such a project.

Or even the workflow of using cross platform frameworks like Flutter, MAUI, React Native and co, with a shared Mac mini for iDevice builds.

Those rough around the edges are unacceptable for a device that costs several month salaries above the competition.

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