> You could analogize it to Apple with OS 9 -> OS 10.9, versus Microsoft with people still running XP
No, you couldn't. The difference in upgrade rates between Windows and OS X is primarily due to their differing customer bases. Windows is very popular in enterprise, which avoids unnecessary upgrades in order to ensure compatibility with in-house software.
OS X, however, has almost no presence in enterprise, and consumers don't mind upgrades nearly as much, since the consumer software they use has to be compatible with all OS versions. Also, you can't buy Macs with old versions of OS X, whereas Microsoft makes it trivial to buy a new machine and install an older version of Windows.
I just want to chime in and say that Apple has done an abysmal job with backward compatibility, and it's not just due to the enterprise vs consumer market. I would wager that if you looked at the total list of apps ever released for Mac OS, the majority of them would not run today. That's because Apple's primary strategies are 1) innovate and 2) put the user first. Putting the developer first is not part of their profit motive like it would be for say Oracle or MathWorks. So without constant recurring effort, developers and the apps they create get left behind.
Apple frequently deprecates APIs that they endorsed just a few years ago. And they claim that apps can be rewritten to work with new APIs in a few hours, when in reality it can take weeks, months or even longer due to refactoring issues. If you want to be an Apple developer, you will likely be rewriting a portion of your code at some point to run on a new OS release. I was optimistic that the practice might end but history is already repeating itself with Apple insisting on iOS 7 compliance. The kicker is that Apple could have ported a lightweight version of Mac OS to run directly on arm for iOS, but they didn't, and I disagree with it being a performance issue (iPads are orders of magnitude more powerful than NeXT machines, or even the early PowerPCs that ran OS X). They created a vast array of nearly duplicate code prefixed with UI instead of NS. This looks like more of an anachronism every day to me with tablets running at multiple GHz with GBs of ram, when the only major difference between desktop and mobile is the touch interface.
Contrast this with Microsoft, where I am finding very old examples designed for Windows XP that still run today. Now Microsoft is certainly burning its developers with the major breaks in various versions of DirectX, or subtle differences in APIs between desktop/mobile/Xbox, but in my opinion this isn't happening nearly to the extent that it is with Apple.
> Contrast this with Microsoft, where I am finding very old examples designed for Windows XP that still run today.
xp? Up until a couple years ago when I switched to 64bit windows (first computer I had with more than 4gm ram) I could still run win3.1 and dos programs in (32-bit) windows 7. Including dos programs designed for the very original ibm pc (1981!).
Even today with 64bit windows I can still run most windows 95 programs.
I'm glad they didn't try too hard in porting MacOS to iOS. The touch/mobile platform is significantly different than the desktop platform. It required a huge rethink in design of the API and the UI. Is the Windows Desktop API similar to the Windows Phone API?
As well as the enterprise, don't forget the non-technical home market, and non-technical small businesses. Windows is much more common there, and they also don't have a short upgrade cycle.
Yes, Macs have a decent presence in enterprises these days--although it's easy to overstate it; Mac overall market share is still pretty low. Somewhere in the 10% percent range I believe. Furthermore. and to the original point, a lot of those Macs are BYOD or otherwise not managed as a corporate desktop/laptop. (Where I work is a case in point. You see a fair number of Macs but IT doesn't formally support them.)
According to this site[0], it's at 7.54%. Out of that, only 32% are running the latest version of OS X (10.9). Another 24.5% are running 10.8. So almost half of OS X users are at least 2 versions behind. Not nearly as up-to-date as you might think.
Well, it's a good thing then that you can't make a direct comparison between the two OSes. Apple doesn't care about developers, quickly deprecating APIs. Therefore, targeting an Apple OS that's 1.5 years old is much more tedious than targeting a Microsoft OS that's 1.5 years old.
My last two jobs were at fortune 100 companies, and both had IT supported macs and a lot of them. A work with a lot of people from other large enterprises and the same is true. This is anecdotal, but more evidence than the guy claiming they don't have a presence
No, you couldn't. The difference in upgrade rates between Windows and OS X is primarily due to their differing customer bases. Windows is very popular in enterprise, which avoids unnecessary upgrades in order to ensure compatibility with in-house software.
OS X, however, has almost no presence in enterprise, and consumers don't mind upgrades nearly as much, since the consumer software they use has to be compatible with all OS versions. Also, you can't buy Macs with old versions of OS X, whereas Microsoft makes it trivial to buy a new machine and install an older version of Windows.