Microsoft shouldn't get too much credit for maintaining compatibility, since all they had to do was basically support 32-bit (x86) and 64-bit (x64) on Intel while Intel did most of the hardware development. OTOH Apple had to migrate from 68K to PPC to Intel to Apple Silicon with varying degrees of control over all of them. Not surprisingly they had their greatest success when they got control over the whole widget. Apple will have some difficult and probably arbitrary decisions to make regarding the M1/M2 chips, but in the past the cleavage was mostly automatic. Seven (or six) years is a good run for the vast majority of users, and they can squeeze a few more years out of that if they prefer.
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What does that have to do with the fact that Apple is unpopular in business because they don't give a damn about compatibility?
Is it really that hard to pay attention to the content of comments instead of spouting fanboy phrases?
Apart from the fact that the majority of companies do not have an RDP server. Why should they? It is far too expensive for small and many medium-sized companies. When thinking about companies and their it needs, please focus less on Fortune500 and more on the shipping company around your corner.
Interestingly, Windows NT (which from Windows XP onwards was also the basis for the consumer versions of Windows) was multi-platform from the beginning. It wasn't even designed for x86 initially, but for Intel i860, an early attempt of Intel at RISC. There were also versions for DEC Alpha, MIPS, PowerPC (!) and later Intel Itanium CPUs IIRC.
People tend to forget that Windows NT was a completely new system and has not much in common with Windows 9x technically.
macOS gained multi-platform support with the "migration" to OPENSTEP actually (i.e. starting with Mac OS X 10.0), as this system was also multi-platform already, with builds both for NeXT's own 68k platform as well as x86 later on.
I'm pretty sure Apple had x86 builds of Mac OS X internally from the beginning and left that door open so to speak (which was a good move).
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Again, this has gotten a lot less important.
The shipping company around my corner rents an Azure Virtual Desktop or similar solutions.
I already did this using Flyby11 on two older macs all works perfectly.
Yep, the mid-90's was a free-for-all. You could go into computer mags and price DEC or MIPS-based NT systems alongside Intel, while looking at high-end products from Sun and Silicon Graphics. Eventually Apple bought NeXT and started working on Rhapsody, which led to OS X (PowerPC first) in 2000. Eventually it took nearly a decade for Apple to release its first x86 products while it worked out compatibility and performance concerns. I always thought it was a poorly-guarded secret that Apple had x86 in the labs since all of the building blocks were already in place.
The developer releases of Rhapsody even came with x86 builds still, in addition to PowerPC. I didn’t use it back then (I started with the Mac OS X Public Beta, after having used NeXTSTEP and OpenStep at a previous employer), but I vaguely remember having managed to install it in VMware once years ago
Have to admit I wasn't brave enough. All I remember from the public betas was that they looked cool, yet I didn't know what I was going to do with them since they had no software. I also ran (and liked) BeOS.The developer releases of Rhapsody even came with x86 builds still, in addition to PowerPC. I didn’t use it back then (I started with the Mac OS X Public Beta, after having used NeXTSTEP and OpenStep at a previous employer), but I vaguely remember having managed to install it in VMware once years ago
Which is why Excel for Mac is crippled and won’t work for any businesses.
Considering MS launched Excel on the Mac eons ago, it’s a form of anti-competitiveness by a dominant player. The DOJ should have looked into the Excel situation years ago when MS first started making professional features Windows only for no good reason.