> Pound for pound, a MacBook will last longer while doing more than a Windows or Linux laptop, despite Microsoft's and Linus's efforts to rectify this.

There is no "Windows or linux laptop". There is a bunch of different brands with varying degree of quality. Macbook lasting more than a dell or an acer, maybe. More than a thinkpad or a surface ? Much less so.

And of course you forget about the desktops...Companies are still using a non negligible amount of those.

> Why would anyone pick Windows over Debian for development if their target is a Linux boxen in a server farm somewhere?

For the same reason people use a macbook, or virtualize linux (vmware) instead of native installation : Better hardware support, better battery life, better support from your enterprise IT etc... etc...

> The tooling is third rate, the WSL (which is a horrible name btw) has thousands of bugs by Microsoft's own admission, and this is after years of MS laboring to get WSL into its current state.

The thing was available about a years ago, why so much hate? I played with it and to be honest, as developer it already has 90 % of everything i need...

For all their fault and mistakes , one thing that the new Microsoft does really well is to adapt to the new development realities and propose simple and pragmatic solution : VS code , typescripts and now WSL...

> Pound for pound, a MacBook will last longer while doing more than a Windows or Linux laptop, despite Microsoft's and Linus's efforts to rectify this.

The repairable/upgradable thinkpads are probably better in this regard

Why would you want to repair/upgrade (and so pay the salaries of hardware IT staff) when you could get business-leased commodity computers with scheduled "upgrades" by return-for-replacement, for the same cost?

I want to repair and upgrade my computer. I suspect there are many people like me that would like the option to upgrade components on my laptop as well. I used to be able to do that with a MBP (2012-ish), now I can't...

The WSL is compelling and to be honest, one of the main reasons I switched to OSX was the command line. Now, I can have a command line and not have to run VM's for 3d stuff, games, and more. Pretty compelling...

That's a personal desire. The context here was corporate buying and depreciation. Why would a corporation want to repair its computers, any more than it would want to repair e.g. its office furniture?

Because swapping a burned out power supply is 5min job while waiting for a [company] technician to bring that replacement computer can be a day+ several others to get the original back?

It boils down to how much the downtime costs. "Do it all in the Cloud" simply doesn't apply across the board.

Why wait? In most companies I've worked at (a few startups; IBM), if your computer isn't working, they take your current one and then hand you a spare out of a pile they have in a closet. The original gets sent for replacement, but you're already at your desk re-doing the documented onboarding process on the new machine.

How many large corporations buy macs for everyone in the company? Serious question... I have no idea. My hunch says; Not many.

Indeed. I've seen Macs as an option, and then you sort of get "developers can get Macs, VPs can get them, but others can't" as the TCO is - apparently - higher, and, let's not forget that, remote manageability is way harder than with Windows, which has stuff like group policies, AD integration, etcetera, all built in (the Macs I used at a previous big corp employer had some terribly hack-ish layered software to get to almost the same level).

With Win10 and WSL (which I've been actively testdriving on my personal hardware) I'd be totally fine to get a Lenovo from BigCorpEmployer. For private use, I won't buy any MBPs anymore anyway for the same reason.

Because Apple isn't immune to screwing up the 'commodity' and plenty of shops are holding off on the new mbp because of the unless touch bar, degraded keyboard, and poor choice of ports. This is a great time for MS to push for this audience and things like WSL are great foundations.

I like them better (and own multiple) but I do have to admit that MacBooks really do more with less. Still, I don't own one or plan to buy a MBP.

I did a wget -r -l3 in WSL just yesterday to download xconq documentation, worked perfectly.