shrug doesn't look like they need it. As long as they keep churning out machines and devices that make people's wallets reflexively open, they don't have to pander to the tiny minorities...

Not a particularly nice situation to be in, if you're not in the Apple ecosystem, but there's the world we live in, and the world we wish it to be. Only sometimes do those worlds overlap.

As though programmers don't use Macs, at least in SV they're by far the device of choice.

I bet the number of people within the technical user base for whom the lack of linux support is a deal-breaker is significantly smaller than the number of people who don't care.

So while it's a nice boost in goodwill, it's probably small enough for Apple to safely ignore.