alt Hacker NewsJust imagine what Apple would do to the market if they also offered a full Linux support, but not Windows... They'd probably own some 70% of Linux market outright and also double its overall size overnight.
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Apple wants to make money with services, however, and buying more devices in their ecosystem. Full Linux support would counteract the lock-in.
If apple came out with their own linux distro, with open drivers and a mainline kernel... A girl can dream!
Don't need to imagine, it did not take off, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MkLinux
> Reception was mixed, focusing on the difficult installation process and the significant performance costs of the Mach kernel. Reviewers noted its potential as a "Unix killer", but that it required users to abandon the user-friendly Macintosh experience for a pure Linux environment.
They already cannibalized a lot of Linux users, developers mainly when they released MacOS X around year 2000.
Suddenly you could have a Unix, with pretty much the same CLI as Linux but without all the supported hardware/driver issues. Laptop sleep in particular was pretty finicky.
If MacOS didn't pick a Unix/BSD base, I'm pretty sure all the tech companies running Mac would be on Linux.