While Mac sales might be flat, and even falling, based on Apple’s most recent financial statements, macOS continues to grow marketshare. With about one in every five computer users now running some version of macOS, Microsoft’s share has dipped below 70%. And while this is good news for Apple, it’s worth understanding some of the reasons behind this. And, in my analysis, Apple owes Microsoft a big thank you.
1. The big factor: compatibility
When I started using a Mac in the early 2000s (I had a white iBook) Apple’s star was starting to rise in the time following Steve Jobs’ return to the company he co-founded. But many organisations and users I spoke to cited the same challenge when trying to get more people switching to a Mac.
Microsoft Office has been the lingua franca of the business world since the early 1990s. And it was very specifically tied to Microsoft Windows. If you wanted the best version of Microsoft Office, you needed to run Microsoft Windows. And things remained like that for a long time.
Even though Microsoft did release a version of Microsoft Office for Mac in 1989, it was developed separately to the Windows version leading to many issues – the biggest being that when a document was shared between Windows and Mac users, stuff broke. Formatting was lost, advanced features weren’t supported across both platforms and all sorts of other hassles.
That has changed significantly in recent years. Office for the Mac and Office for Windows look and work almost identically across both platforms. There are some interface differences (Apple and Microsoft have different design languages when it comes to placement of menus and window management) but you could sit a Windows user in front of Mac with Microsoft Office and they would quickly get the hang of things.
File format and feature equivalence is now a reality. I cannot recall the last time someone received a Word document, Excel spreadsheet of PowerPoint presentation from me and couldn’t open it or found some formatting screw up.
Of course, Microsoft Office isn’t the only thing that’s changed.
Microsoft’s ship of Theseus
It’s worth highlighting that the CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, has had a big part to play in the shift in the popularity of different operating systems.
When Nadella took over as CEO from Steve Ballmer (the guy that said no-one would buy an iPhone), he changed the company’s trajectory drastically. Instead of continuing Microsoft’s focus on selling and licensing Microsoft Windows and Office, he shifted his vision to cloud computing. Today, Microsoft Azure competes with Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform to be the three dominant players in corporate cloud services.
But he also moved the company’s software away from perpetual licenses to subscription models. Instead of having a major software release every few years, subscribers get new features and fixes regularly. As well as giving the company a regular income stream – monthly subscriptions rather than upgrades every few years – it means users only have incremental changes to deal with as new features arrive rather than steep learning curves when everything changes every few years, making software into the ship of Theseus.
2. Cloud apps have made operating systems less relevant
The advent of cloud apps and Software as a Service (SaaS) means the performance of your web browser is probably more important than your operating system.
When the operating system ceases to be the determining factor in what apps you can use, it gives people the freedom to choose the hardware they use. And when they can choose the hardware, Apple’s gear is on the same playing field as the rest of the PC world.
When you look at the data for operating systems share across all platforms (computers, tablets and smartphones) it’s clear that people are getting things done without relying on Microsoft as their only operating system option.
Android’s relevance as a desktop platform is questionable. and Statcounter’s data doesn’t separate iPhone and iPad as it counts both in its iOS data. That means there is still some ‘fuzziness’ in the numbers. But this does highlight that access to cloud apps and services is at a level where the operating system is less relevant today than it’s ever been.
3. The pandemic impact
The increase in Apple’s desktop computing marketshare has slowly, but steadily, increased since the start of the CoVID 19 pandemic. The rapid shift to people working from home, the increased sales of PCs to enable working from home and increased use of personal devices for work has likely helped Apple boost its market position.
One of the factors in play is that individuals had to become more self-supporting and resilient when working remotely from support teams. And many organisations allowed people to choose the computer they wanted to use rather than mandating a specific make and model for everyone.
Back when I worked in and ran IT departments, I argued that we didn’t mandate what brand of pen or paper people used. Computers are the 21st century’s pen and paper. Yet we still try to mandate the main tool many people use for their work. The pandemic changed that thinking – not universally but probably enough to have an impact on Apple’s share of global desktop computing.
Anthony is the founder of Australian Apple News. He is a long-time Apple user and former editor of Australian Macworld. He has contributed to many technology magazines and newspapers as well as appearing regularly on radio and occasionally on TV.