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Windows 11 has 1 Billion+ installs. That's not a decline and hardly a crisis. That's a huge install base.
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While that's true, I also think these things tend to happen as a gradual build up to the tipping-point effect where the zeitgeist shifts so suddenly that a massive player is suddenly irrelevant.

Microsoft is structurally incapable of making Windows better. Intel is intrinsically incapable of making x86 better (enough to matter). x86 hardware manufacturers are in a price race to the bottom, and there's no way around that.

Apple doesn't have any of those problems. Instead, more and more young people can afford and aspire to get a Mac. They want to buy software that works on the mac, and they'll want to write software for the Mac. The network effect compounds.

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I swear that I read this comment in 2019, and it's still wrong today. Young people want iPhones, go look at Apple's revenue breakdown. iPhones and iPhone accessories dwarf Mac sales, the only comparable product in terms of revenue is the iPad. There is no evidence that Apple Silicon has changed that B2C story.

In the broader B2B sense, Apple lost pole-position to Nvidia. They're not the ecosystem kingmaker they once were, and their ARM architecture is failing to subsume demand for their competitors. The "Private Compute" Mac-based servers are going terribly according to reports, and their contribution to the chip shortage has even driven them to collaborate with Intel Foundry Services: https://www.macrumors.com/2025/11/28/intel-rumored-to-supply...

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The zeitgeist exists on forums like this. Outside where people touch grass now and then, they largely don't care.

x86 OEMs are a race to the bottom because that's how the PC market has been for eons as PCs are a tool, not a status symbol, but how has x86 not 'gotten better'? It's significantly more battery friendly than it has ever been by a long margin, matching the M-series.

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This.

Ofc a huge chunk of that is in companies but I'm fairly sure there are at least two windows 11 machines per one mac in consumer segment as well.

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It's just momentum. You buy windows because you have windows. You buy windows because there's not really much of a choice. You have windows because you're not going out of your ways to reconfigure hundreds of laptops at your company just for your employees to be less comfortable with Linux.

Now introduce a choice… and things might change.

With the vast majority of software nowadays living in the browser, your OS matters less and less, especially for a business that buys machines for its employees.

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As OS matters less that’s probably not going to entrench Microsoft less. Their relationship with OEM:s is not market based but a two way relationship.

At this point I would not be surprised if MS started to subvent the PC manufacturers to favour Windows over Linux if that ever comes to that.

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> At this point I would not be surprised if MS started to subvent the PC manufacturers to favour Windows over Linux if that ever comes to that.

I've always assumed this has been happening since the 90s.

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I would have expected MS has charged some fee for Windows but honestly no clue.

I'm sure there are readers with actual insight here :)

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Generally you can see the Windows fee. Just go to an OEM like Lenovo and configure a laptop without Windows. It'll be some -$ amount.
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There's an anecdote about flies and shit there somewhere =)
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