This equation is lacking, since he doesn't account for the cost of ownership.

I'm moving all my people to macs from windows because the amount of lost work on windows and the amount of IT help needed is much greater for windows.

Also, the anti-virus solutions on windows, which are much more needed there[1], have gotten really terrible recently. AVG was basically making the machines useless.

[1] The standard I use for new mac users is they are not administrators, like everyone is on Windows. That prompt on windows to ask to install something that all users get numb to and say "yes"? Doesn't exist for my mac users, since they aren't admins. That alone helps in so many ways.

"Everyone being administrators" is a default on OSX and Windows - and you can configure both trivially to avoid the issue you state.

No sane System or Windows Admin gives anyone admin rights on Windows without a very, very good reason (e.g. they are a developer and admin on their machine is a good thing). There also are very few computer uses that require local storage of any sort.

Should developer have any admin rights by default anymore?

I worked in bank for a while without admin. In many years, the only tool that needed admin rights to run was the Visual Studio C++ Debugger.

Debuggers were one one, but also some other development tools just wouldn't run unless the developer had admin. Virtualization does mitigate some stuff.

This is simply untrue. No corporate IT team configures Windows so users are Administrators by default.

Microsoft’s does, interestingly.

I didn't know everyone had to be an admin by default on Windows.

How do users lose work on Windows? Just by installing garbage all over the place?

They don't. The person who said this is pushing an agenda trying to scare people away from Windows so his company can make more money.

I feel like the people who work in this space see the post and it doesn't pass the smell test. For everyone else, I do not mind them learning the hard way why most businesses run a certain way.

The obvious answer is the tools fit their needs best. It's not like OSX is some big secret.

You don't have to be an admin on Windows, but you can't do anything if you aren't. At every company that hires me where I have to use their PC, one of the first steps is always to request admin rights, because I need to be able to install dev tools. On Linux, you can have a special user account that can only install apps, without requiring root access. I think that would go a long way to preventing this sort of ransomware.

Although losing data on a user machine should of course never be crippling to a company in the first place. Make sure everything is committed to a central location, as well as backed up at regular times.

Honest question, have you tried upgrading the hardware (mainly by adding an SSD) for windows users? An SSD can make a night and day difference in performance that may invalidate your decision to move everyone to Mac.