managed to write this whole chapter on desktop GIS without mentioning that the reason Esri only runs on Windows machines is they went all in on COM architecture and I guess they thought Apple was too niche, is this a thing anyone else will care about
@geospacedman wow! what year was that?
@ingrid my first postdoc, 1990.
@ingrid the UK research councils set up a network of Regional Research Labs to do GIS social science research and fitted them out with Sun 3/60 micros, Calcomp printers and digitisers, and the odd DOS box. And some researchers...
@ingrid drag and dropping data into QGIS on MacOS was a game changer to me so yes, totally IMHO
@clhenrick cross platform software, unimaginable for the GIS professional LOL
@clhenrick my apologies I forgot they are your employer
@ingrid 🚬 com architecture? Now there’s a name I haven’t heard in a long while
@ingrid I remember when it also ran on SunOS, and we only had PC ArcInfo because it could attach to the digitiser.