A spicy question. Overused as well.

People can sometimes be downright cultish about their desktop/laptop OS preferences - or what they’re simply used to. That goes for both people in the tech industry and outside of it. There are also differences across industries and countries. For instance, comparing Croatia where I live and USA, ChromeOS is practically non-existant here, and Windows has a far larger market share over macOS. Just popping the question is often enough to get one into heated arguments.

Most people in the world who use any sort of computer use Windows on their personal and business device, and a lot of professional, commercial software targets Windows as a platform. Games too. Corporations also like handing out Windows, as most IT personnel are used to provisioning them, and bringing them into some form of centralized endpoint control and compliance. There are, however, major downsides - bloat, telemetry and forced updates are just some of them. For me, the biggest issue is that I work in Linux/UNIX world, and Windows is the only major OS that is not a part of it. This leads to some blockers - not too hard to avoid on your personal PC, but they can sometimes be major on devices with heavy corporate lockdown. Give me WSL and I can work on it, but otherwise my least favorite OS out of the bunch.

When talking about macOS, it’s usually coupled with its hardware - and hardware-wise, Apple makes some of the best devices around. Fantastic build quality, touchpads, screens, sound, power efficiency, and M series is pretty great. I’ve never felt limited by macOS, though I never tried to game on it, because its’ terminal is a pretty standard UNIX terminal. A native one - so I prefer it to WSL - but with some older versions of the binaries.

I’m still most productive on Linux, as all the servers I work on also use Linux and I built my career on this. My personal projects are also built on Linux and related software. It’s my system of choice, and I support the free-as-in-freedom software philosophy. But not a lot of releases are supported by the sort of control that companies usually wish to use - or have IT personnel capable of supporting.

Conclusion

In the end, my personal choice matters little in daily use because I work with company issued equipment. And I can, in most circumstances, be productive in all of them. A lot of people seem to have a fear of learning anything outside of their comfort zone, and that’s a shame. There’s always new things to learn in this industry.