Can Apple threaten Microsoft’s grip on the business-centric enterprise sector? Macs become 6‑year investments, boasting fewer crashes and instabilities than Windows PCs

Microsoft has had a rough start to the year with critical bugs impacting Windows 11's functionality. In case you missed it, the tech giant's first Windows 11 update in 2026 made it difficult for some users to fully shut down their PCs, while others reported being unable to sign in to a device when using Remote Desktop.

Thankfully, Microsoft is rethinking how it rolls out Windows updates and will soon allow users to postpone installing them indefinitely — something I haven't seen since Windows 8. Right now, Windows 11 only lets you pause these updates for up to 30 days, after which available updates are downloaded and installed automatically onto your PC.

But how do these botched Windows updates actually affect enterprise users in business environments? A new report by Omnissa reveals that Windows bugs and crashes cost up to 24 minutes of productivity, which employees use to recalibrate their focus on work (via Neowin).

The report also detailed interesting insights when comparing Windows to macOS endpoints:

• Windows devices exhibited 3.1 times more total forced shutdowns than macOS.
• Windows experienced 2.2 times more total application crashes than macOS.
• Windows experienced 7.5 times more app hangs than macOS.
• More than 50% of the Windows and Android devices in regulated industries such as healthcare and pharma were five major OS updates behind
• More than 50% of education desktops and mobile devices are unencrypted

Naturally, Omnissa’s report shouldn’t be taken as a definitive picture of how enterprise users interact with Windows and macOS, since it’s based on aggregated telemetry data from endpoint devices in 2025, which is only a drop in the ocean when compared to Microsoft's vast market share of operating systems worldwide.

Perhaps more interestingly, the report also noted that Copilot is gaining broad adoption across enterprise-managed mobile devices, with a 97.5% installation rate. That said, employees also added alternatives like ChatGPT (on 91% of iOS devices) and Gemini (on 61% of Android devices).

The report also mentions that organizations that purchased Macs as their daily drivers considered them an "asset investment" with a 6-year lifespan compared to Windows at 3 years.

What's more, it revealed that macOS had a 120% higher DEX (digital employee experience) score than Windows. However, Windows continues to dominate government institutions with a reported growth of 2x year over year (YoY).

Is the MacBook Neo involved?

Ever since Apple unveiled its $599 MacBook Neo, the budget-friendly entry has sparked debates across social media, with the general sentiment being centered around the possibility of it being a Windows PC killer.

Even former Windows lead Steven Sinofsky calls the MacBook Neo "a paradigm-shifting computer" while reflecting on Microsoft's failed vision and plans for Surface and Windows.

The entry-level device can run basic Windows 11 apps through Parallels Desktop with strong single-core performance, but it struggles beyond light productivity or with GPU-intensive tasks. It remains to be seen if Apple's MacBook Neo will have a knock-on effect in the enterprise department against Windows.

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