Until a few decades ago, the term 'billion' actually meant one million million (1e12) in the UK, rather than the now commonly-accepted meaning of one thousand million (1e9). As a British paper, the FT may simply be trying to avoid the ambiguity.
The Mac is no better, in my experience. I just timed how long it takes to open the Calculator app – the simplest app I could think of – on my 2019 MacBook Pro, and the window appears 600ms after clicking on the dock icon. I would not call that immediate, and it only gets worse when you try more complex applications, especially those written in Electron.