This is a speculation. The reason why companies modified Linux kernel was simply because some of its versions are open-sourced, while Windows is closed source and proprietary. I would speculate even further saying that being open source is what made Linux survive against insanely huge market share conquered by Windows.
Although I keep Jason's point of view that Linux is not a commercially viable platform per se, I think being a niche market it does have a sort of market opportunity exactly as shown in the graphs above, by getting support from people be it in terms of donations or contributions.
A little back on topic though, I do consider that Apple makes some rather good hardware; for instance, even though I had doubts before purchase, I find my Mac Mini 11'' particularly comfy and that tiny little thing powered by Core i5 is quite powerful! It is also *very* thin, while still being quite solid. Mind you, retaking our previous SSD vs non-SSD discussion, that Mac Mini has SSD, which hasn't failed yet. The only thing I hate in this thing is Spanish keyboard, which introduced new buttons and triple combinations, and after few months I'm still not used to it. (I'm used to US-based keyboards and many years ago there was no such thing as international keyboard).
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