Chromebook vs windows vs Apple MacOS

[yungman]

TL;DR Summary

I want to compare the popularity of them

I am not asking about what is the difference between, I mainly interested in the popularity of them. I worked in the high tech industry, only one I saw people using was Windows, I only saw people in graphics design using Apple, never seen Chromebook.

The school of my grand daughter gives every student a chromebook. Is that a marketing ploy to give free chromebook to students?

I know the popularity of the OS mainly depends on the availability of software, computer is useless if not for the availability of software. For example, I do a lot of schematic capture, pcb layout, circuit simulations. Are they available for Apple MacOS or Chromebook?

 

[Vanadium 50]

Ifb you type the exact words "Popularity of Chromebook vs windows vs Apple MacOS" into Google, you will get the answer "In Q1 2020, Apple and Google were neck-and-neck: Windows grabbed 87.5% market share, macOS took 5.8%, and Chrome OS captured 5.3%."

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[anorlunda]

Summary:: I want to compare the popularity of them

The school of my grand daughter gives every student a chromebook. Is that a marketing ploy to give free chromebook to students?

I know the popularity of the OS mainly depends on the availability of software, computer is useless if not for the availability of software. For example, I do a lot of ...

Besides the affordability, corporations should like the inability to install most 3rd party software packages as a valuable property. It greatly reduces the cost of IT support, if employees or students are unable to misconfigure anything.

I remember the horrible mess during Y2K days because PC and Mac users had installed so much software over the years, and the corporation had no way of knowing how that stuff was used, or if it might be critical. I participated one weekend erasing the hard drives and personal files on 275,000 PCs and pushing an install of standard software; same for everybody.

You can control that behavior with tough policies, but enforcement costs money and it breeds ill will with the employees. Much better to give employees a device not capable of doing many of those things. Remember that most employees are clerical, not technical, so their legitimate computer uses are more narrow.

The military is even more strict. They forbid removable media, and trowel wet concrete into all USB ports.

 

[Vanadium 50]

trowel wet concrete into all USB ports.

It's only epoxy.

 

[jedishrfu]

Some shops prefer windows machines and will have a common load of software imaged onto them. Other shops prefer MacOS because the software is better vetted and/or Unix Is needed for their work. Chrome books are likely used by shops that have their documents in the cloud and are comfortable with that approach.

The unix requirement has been somewhat addressed on Windows with the Windows Subsystem for Linux which is basically Ubuntu or other distro running in a windows sandbox.

I read an article a few years back that said Macs were better than Windows machines for total cost of ownership meaning they were easier to manage and cost companies less in maintenance over the long term.

https://www.cio.com/article/3133945/ibm-says-macs-save-up-to-543-per-user.html

Another report mentioned that corporate machines should be upgraded every three years or so in order to avoid obsolescence of hardware/software components. Large companies will basically replace a third of their machine population every year. In contrast, end users will be on a five year cycle.

 

[Algr]

Ifb you type the exact words "Popularity of Chromebook vs windows vs Apple MacOS" into Google, you will get the answer "In Q1 2020, Apple and Google were neck-and-neck: Windows grabbed 87.5% market share, macOS took 5.8%, and Chrome OS captured 5.3%."

​

It's not quite as simple as that anymore, as the line between what is a tablet and what is a PC is blurring, and will likely do so to a greater extent in the future. Also "Windows sales" tend to include things like cash registers and ATM machines that are not relevant to how people normally use the machines.

Another report mentioned that corporate machines should be upgraded every three years or so in order to avoid obsolescence of hardware/software components. Large companies will basically replace a third of their machine population every year. In contrast, end users will be on a five year cycle.

I'm typing this on an 8 year old Mac, that I use for 4k video editing. I still don't have a compelling reason to upgrade.