This ignores the large amount of business software which is Windows only. For many companies, and the people that work for them, you simply can't switch even if you are desperate to.
This actually is a very valid point at the most obvious level: Office 365.
Nowadays I work on a Mac (finally![0]) and, yes, Office 365 is available for macOS, but it’s not at parity with Office 365 on Windows. Mostly this doesn’t matter and it’s certainly a lot more capable than any of the web versions of the office apps. But, at least for me, it does sometimes matter with Excel.
So I decided to use Wine to install the Windows version of Office 365. The installer started but it crapped out after the intro page and I haven’t been able to get past the error.
I could install Parallels but I kind of hate it because it involves running Windows whose bag o’ shiteness is the whole reason I’m so ecstatic about having a job where I can work on a Mac in the first place.
Realistically, there isn’t anything that comes close to O365 either. Excel is the best spreadsheet app, still, by a country mile, and all the other apps are best in class too. So it’s the industry standard in just about every industry and if you’re in one of the few companies who’ve gone a different way then in some scenarios it can make you kind of a pain in the ass to deal with.
[0] I fully accept that this may just be a stepping stone toward working on Linux. Hopefully by the time I need to do it support for a Linux on laptops will be a bit better, and I’ll be able to avoid buying a Dell.
Where "business software" is, in particular, the software for running a business. Your CAD or simulation software or development environment may all be fully-supported on Linux, but that means nothing, because corporate wants their SharePoint and Exchange servers and analytics attached to them, and corporate IT in particular wants their "security" software and remote management capabilities. All of that is what chains larger companies to Windows.
Which will be running on Windows Enterprise deployments owned by the business, not personal machines owned by individuals. And as has already been commented, Windows Enterprise does let you control this. But that case doesn't seem to be what the discussion here is about.
>Which will be running on Windows Enterprise deployments
There are many companies which run Windows-specific software which do not even have an in-house IT department, let alone run Enterprise edition on corporately-deployed machines.
I'd say the vast majority of <50 person companies I have consulted for run Pro, not Enterprise.
Many businesses do not run Windows Enterprise, but plain-old Pro. Not every business is a big business, capable of reaching to these SKUs.
What they can do, is to run WSUS. Though today, many businesses do not have on-prem Windows Server deployments, and do not even have suitable space in their offices even if they wanted one.
Matlab is not the only software which businesses use. I'm speaking generally why many companies and employees can't "just switch OS", not specifically to the post.
QuickBooks for Mac is not feature-equivilent to QuickBooks Enterprise. You cannot run QuickBooks Enterprise on a Mac, as far as I know, and if you can, it isn't on the supported OS list.
>"Note: Linux and Windows 10 S Mode not supported. QuickBooks requires you to use Windows natively and not through an emulator or virtual environment."
Software like Quickbooks is easy to run via RemoteApp. In fact, many probably do that, because it makes for easier maintenance. (I've seen several companies to run Dynamics AX exactly this way, for exactly this reason).
With Solidworks, it would be much more difficult. It is a kind of software, you want to run locally on your beefy workstation.
'Support' is such a nebulous, catch-all term to justify throwing good money after bad.
The author paid for Windows 11. Why try to crowdsource help for free when they can presumably just pick up a phone and get Microsoft to fix their problem for them?
I mean, I'm not going to defend the quality of their support.
But if your a small company (i.e. no in-house IT) and you have to choose between using the support included with your purchase of QuickBooks or paying a third-party IT company an hourly consulting rate to fix a QuickBooks problem... The choice is pretty clear.
