Why are developers switching from Mac OS X to Linux?

http://cialu.net/blog/switch-from-mac-os-x-to-linux.html

by BuuQu9hu • 10 years ago

252 393 10 years ago

cialu.net

gjvc• 10 years ago

Fedora 25 is solid and compatible enough.

drKarl• 10 years ago

The Apple hardware and operating system have been standards for developers for many years now.

I disagree with that statement. You can argue that many developers like to use MacBooks, but from that to saying that it's standard there's a long way...

and sells overpriced hardware

Apple has ALWAYS sold overpriced hardware

akerro• 10 years ago

Apple has ALWAYS sold overpriced hardware

But people realised it now, so they write short blog posts about it now.

72deluxe3• 10 years ago

I used to think that they sell overpriced hardware but if I look around for a similar device all I see is an expensive Microsoft device.

I always thought a good device was going to cost at least £1000.

coldtea2• 10 years ago

Apple has ALWAYS sold overpriced hardware

Apple recently sells obsolete hardware overpriced (e.g. 2-3 years old minis or Mac Pros).

Aside from that, they din't historically sell "overpriced" hardware. What they did sell was only/mainly high end hardware (not in raw cpu/gpu performance, in the construction, feature set, etc).

Time and again, when websites or people tried to match item per item the respective Apple PC with an equivalent Wintel PC (of the same class, e.g. VAIO back in the day, Dell XPS, etc) AND match the various features, they always ended up in parity or very near parity. And with some features without match at all on the other side (e.g. no magsafe option, lesser trackpad quality, etc).

Even in stuff like tablets, anybody who's been there at the time, remembers that competitors to the iPad took more than a year to bring a device with matching specs AND a smaller price out. The responses from various vendors were up to 20% to 30% higher than the iPad asking price.

martinald• 10 years ago

I don't even agree with this. When the original Core Duo MacBooks came out, they were by far the cheapest dual core laptops about for quite some time. Even discounting the better build quality, trackpads etc that they had.

Yaggo• 10 years ago

Apple has ALWAYS sold overpriced hardware

Overpriced, compared to what? To competitors, which can't even produce similar product? Overpriced in terms of market demand, while making big profit?

If you buy your PC components from Apple, that's your problem. Nobody complains that Bosch automotive industry components are expensive if you buy them from Tesla in the form of Model S.

Not to mention that Apple's price always include both hardware and software, because they are bundled, so you don't actually know the price of hardware, because with Mac, you also buy a licence for OS X, essentially.

rorykoehler3• 10 years ago

Each microprocessor is graded in the factory. Apple buys up all the highest graded chips meaning no one else can get any.

na852• 10 years ago

What a joke.

Got a source saying that the i7 I buy from Intel is somehow inferior to the one that ships in an Apple product?

valarauca1• 10 years ago

     Each microprocessor is graded in the factory

Yes Intel does binning but that is to classify processor classes. Intel runs their E3, i7, i5, and i3 production on the same die.

It looks like this:

Memory controller went bad and can't handle ECC? Looks like an that E3-1??? vX just became an i7-X???.

Virtualization went bad? That i7-X??? just became an i5-X???

Bad 1/2 cores? Well that i5-X??? just became an i3-X???

There is additional binning but that just determines if the processor can have an unlocked multiplier or not.

kayoone4• 10 years ago

Apple has ALWAYS sold overpriced hardware

No, a lot of Apple hardware was/is competitively priced when they launch, they just never lower the price so you have to be smart about the purchase. Macbook Pros compared to similar quality Thinkpads/Elite Books/Dell Latitude/Precision have never been really overpriced for what they offer, it's different for the latest generation though.

EtienneK• 10 years ago

Biggest problem for me is that it's too big of an issue to try and get my (Blizzard) games to work on Linux. Yes, it's possible - and I have done it before - but it's just so much easier with macOS.

macOS gives me that good balance between Windows (for play) and Linux (for work).

chx2• 10 years ago

Increasingly the solution is vfio: have a gaming video card in the system and pass it on to a Windows VM exclusively. So Linux runs on Intel IGP which is fairly painless and the game gets a powerful videocard.

jjn2009• 10 years ago

This works surprisingly well. I have a xeon chip which probably helps but its great to have this flexibility

dom02• 10 years ago

The Apple hardware and operating system have been standards for developers for many years now.

I think this is yet-another kind of bubble people submerge themselves in.

lallysingh4• 10 years ago

Lots of places are heavy Mac, even when they only develop server side software to run on Linux. The laptops are well behaved, low maintenance, have good UIs, and have good support.

gpderetta• 10 years ago

I still don't understand why one would use a laptop as their main development environment instead of a proper workstation (more cores, more ram, larger disks).

dom02• 10 years ago

You're missing the point. I'm not saying macs are bad or whatever, I'm saying that "macs are the default hardware for everyone ^W developers" is just skewed overall. Backing that claim up by "but [I feel like] 90 % of conference people have a macbook on their lap" is just backing my claim up, that it's a skewed perception, because conference attendees are a minority of all developers (they have to be - just compare the number of developers to the attendee numbers of big conferences), and you can't just extrapolate (the same goes for "I only see {macbooks, XPSes, thinkpads (pick one)} at $coffeeShop").

Many people don't care about conferences at all, or their employers don't care (and hence these people don't feel like spending hundreds of bucks from their own pockets to attend), some don't want to go on conferences and so on. For/to many developers they are just irrelevant. Obviously not everyone goes to coffee shops, either.

raspasov2• 10 years ago

Have we reached peak Apple hate yet?

lallysingh4• 10 years ago

No, Apple hasn't been interesting enough to hate that much.

wineisfine2• 10 years ago

I don't think it's hate - at all, it's rather: dissapointment. So far, Apple didn't do anything malicious or evil, they just majorly underperformed to our audience.

raspasov2• 10 years ago

Eh, maybe - I just remember being wrong myself about things like the iPad, for example. There was a ton of "it's just an oversized iPhone" speak everywhere but it turned out to be a pretty successful product (not better than iPhone but still successful by most standards). Right now there's a ton of "dongle catastrophe" speak.

Not saying that we should not demand more and better from Apple but I think many of the complaints are not very warranted.

For example, I don't know why people are complaining that MacOS has "suffered" compared to iOS. In my opinion, the latest Sierra version is way better than Lion for example.

72deluxe3• 10 years ago

Things missing for me on Linux:

Logic Pro X (no Ardour doesn't cut it, sorry. I even subscribed for a while).

Xcode (for iPhone/iPad development. KDevelop and Geany or Nemiver, CodeBlocks etc. isn't going to cut it, sorry).

Ability to AirPlay to my AppleTV 3rd gen. Does anyone know anything I can easily broadcast to from a video inside a web page? On Safari or Quicktime I just have to click the airplay icon.

For reference, I write C++ for my dayjob and for fun (who doesn't??)

aphextron• 10 years ago

Does anyone know anything I can easily broadcast to from a video inside a web page

Chromecast is really cheap and works like a charm. I can mirror my desktop or web browser tabs.

TomMarius• 10 years ago

Ability to AirPlay to my AppleTV 3rd gen. Does anyone know anything I can easily broadcast to from a video inside a web page? On Safari or Quicktime I just have to click the airplay icon.

Chromecast would fit your needs, maybe?

Filligree• 10 years ago

Xcode (for iPhone/iPad development. KDevelop and Geany or Nemiver, CodeBlocks etc. isn't going to cut it, sorry).

For iPhone development I'm sure you need a mac, but if you want an IDE, look no further than IDEA. It's much better than Xcode in general, and does have a C++ plugin. (Of course.)

Ability to AirPlay to my AppleTV 3rd gen. Does anyone know anything I can easily broadcast to from a video inside a web page? On Safari or Quicktime I just have to click the airplay icon.

Chromecast.

gm-conspiracy• 10 years ago

Can Chromecast work on a LAN without internet access?

chippy• 10 years ago

For iPhone development I'm sure you need a mac

I'm wondering, can one use a VM?

013• 10 years ago

I know Chromecast has been said a few times, but to expand a little.

You can 'cast' you whole desktop of a specific chrome tab. Youtube videos and many streaming sites can cast directly to your TV.

I currently use the VideoStream[0] extension to play local videos on my TV, but soon VLC should be able to do this. (It supposedly works in the beta releases, but it doesn't for me YMMV)

Plex can cast directly to your TV.

[0] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/videostream-for-go...

mcjiggerlog• 10 years ago

I use Airflow[0] to cast local videos and it works extremely well.

[0] http://airflowapp.com/

NTripleOne• 10 years ago

I have locked myself into the apple ecosystem and I don't know how to get out

therealmarv6• 10 years ago

exactly was I was thinking. This are all heavy Mac software things which are never supposed to run on a different OSes. Nobody should blame Linux for not supporting that.

coldtea2• 10 years ago

A better question. "Who said they are?".

Some are. Also on the other direction (and to/from Windows). Complaints for Apple, 32GB RAM option etc aside, I see no much reason to believe the numbers have changed in any large way.

If for once a US-based developer conference (and its speakers) are not predominantly Apple laptops, we can check this again.

Fnoord10• 10 years ago

Some are switching, some are not. Some arguments are sound, some aren't. Its all rather vague and anecdotal, without hard numbers. It really depends on the needs of the developer (or user in general), and if they're willing to make compromises or allow changes.

The problems:

* Lack of focus on macOS (compared to iOS), and the iOSation of macOS.

* Lack of hardware upgrades on Mac Mini, Mac Pro, Macbook Air. MBP specific: focus on size and weight (and butterfly keyboard with less travel) instead of DDR4 32 GB RAM / stronger battery / latest gen processor (read: MBP becoming MBA). Gimmicks like touchbar, force touch.

* "Bullying." +300 EUR extra tax on MBP. Ridiculous things like having to pay 100 USD to release a Safari extension.

[Please, feel free to make addenda on these.]

A post with some random picture of GNOME 3 with a Terminal is just cringeworthy though. What does that have to do with developers? I see no development taking place. Could be a sysadmin's workstation for all we know.

I very much like macOS. Its excellent for development. You have the software from macOS (which includes some software not available on Linux). You got UNIX under the hood. All of the software is managed with Homebrew which is excellent (macOS has come a long way in that regard). Really need Windows? You got all the options available from Linux (VM, WINE) plus Bootcamp. Microsoft even provide a VM with Edge themselves. The keybinds and workflow in macOS are consistent and feel natural (with the addition of Amethyst for window management, Tmux in iTerm (fullscreen with Powerline, and Vim), and Alfred instead of Spotlight), and I'm very much used to them. That being said I could just use a Terminal with Git and SSH and Vim or Sublime Text on Linux or Windows as well, but I'd lose some of the above advantages. Linux has far less software, the workflow is clunky, and I'm scared for all the hardware working well. Windows just isn't UNIX under the hood and you notice that when you work with open source software just like you notice WINE isn't native on Linux or macOS.

rangibaby2• 10 years ago

Package managers on Linux work better than brew IMO. They are more mature and better integrated with the OS. It would be nice if brew upgrade installed OS security patches etc.

Instead there are the unsolicited, constant, and annoying nags from the MAS.

I found it easier to rebind keys in GNOME than Mac OS.

Dual booting OSes has existed longer than Mac OS X.

Are there many truly Mac-only apps these days? Apple's own apps used to be a draw for me but they got rid of the one I used seriously (Aperture) and change the others so much it is hard to keep up.

Adobe apps are honestly the only reason I am keeping my Mac partition at this point.

mbernstein2• 10 years ago

Honest questions since I read these sorts of things a lot right now. There's the assertion that there's a lack of focus on macOS (I agree w/ the hardware issues for the most part).

1) What data other than anecdotal (e.g. it feels like things crash more) do we have that supports the assertion? 2) What features would you ask Apple to focus on? What improvements are necessary for macOS to be a better development platform for you?

I don't have any major complaints about macOS itself for development purposes. Others may and I read a lot of gripes about it generically but very little specifically.

scrabble• 10 years ago

You wouldn't notice a change from me, since I switched to Linux on my MBP. My next refresh will be to a Carbon, but this laptop is still fairly new.

Philipp__3• 10 years ago

Situation is fairly simple. Linux on desktop has reached some kind of mature phase (as weird as it sounds, compared to previous years, Linux on desktop was never in better position), where you can get decent performance out of DE and GUI, without sacrificing comfort of CLI. On the other hand, many developers felt let down by Apple's last year, and decided to jump to Windows/Linux. And that is totally fine. I think few factors played crucial role in that, besides Apple's weak year. For example, people needed change. Many of devs got bored, and we know we developer are weird kind of people, sometimes little masochistic, where we constantly tweak and play with our systems.

Remember the times around 2006. when many developers were jumping to Apple ecosystem, rise of TextMate, Dtrace, the magnificent Snow Leopard came out year after that...

So I think things move, and that's the good thing. If you are not satisfied or productive on current platform/setup, then go and search for something that will fit your needs.

I bought 13" MBP last year (2015. model) and I am really happy with the machine, to the point where I don't have a single gripe (except macOS thingys).

itchynosedev• 10 years ago

I think 2015 mbp is the closest a laptop got to being perfect for me. Screen, battery life, trackpad, finish and performance. All in a beautiful balance.

I used to dislike macos so much that went mbp 2015 > thinkpad > sp4. I realised how much better macbooks were than their comptetition that I bought it again only with more storage. I think Surface line will bethe next thing for me but it was still too buggy for daily use.

wastedhours• 10 years ago

Agree, bought my 2015 MBP about 6 months ago and it's all but perfect and satisfies all of my needs. When the time comes though, I'm jealously eyeing up a Razer Blade 14, which could dual boot to a Linux distro...

Philipp__3• 10 years ago

Surface was always tempting for me, but I can't stand Windows in any shape or form. I really hate it, and I never felt comfortable using it or developing on it (I never touched Microsoft stack, .NET, Azure and that stuff, so...).

What looks more tempting to me, is new Lenovo Carbon X1 that got announced a day ago on CES. That could be sweet Linux dev. machine, light, with solid battery life, thin bezels, nice keyboard, trackpoint...

digi_owl• 10 years ago

Expect things to break soon enough, because CADT...

slitaz• 10 years ago

There is choice now for good high-end laptops that come with Ubuntu. The Dell XPS13, the system76 and others.

Udo2• 10 years ago

I'm in the process of doing this, but it's difficult. When I switched from Linux to OS X as my desktop about a decade ago, I felt at home in a way I hadn't been since the Amiga. Now the Mac platform is stagnating, and in fact becoming somewhat of a prison, in both hardware and software.

There's very clearly no future here for me, but I'm switching to Linux sort-of by default, not because it's better. In many respects, it's worse. There's always Windows, which would have the benefit of a (comparatively) low-maintenance system, and I could get working versions of many apps that have been making my life easier on the Mac for some time, but the system itself feels alien to me.

I'm certainly not switching to Linux on already existing Macs, because macOS hasn't become bad enough to do that, not by a long shot. What's driving the slow changeover right now is hardware. So I got a PC, and I'm running it side-by-side with a Mac via Synergy, but honestly I spend most of my time on the Mac side. When I switched to OS X it was immediate and without looking back, whereas now I'm dragging my heels.

All of this makes me very unhappy. I wish more vendors would just cross-compile to all three platforms. There should be very few, if any, apps that absolutely can't exist on multiple platforms. I understand that a big part of the problem is platform-independent UI, but even that shouldn't be such a huge deal if you just take care of that from the start - instead of suddenly being in the situation where your app is so intricately interwoven with your UI toolkit that it can't be separated anymore.

tornadoboy553• 10 years ago

The biggest issue isn't UI - GTK easily solves that. It's just that when you officially release something you have to support it. Support costs money. That isn't feasible for a ~3% market share OS.

Udo2• 10 years ago

The biggest issue isn't UI - GTK easily solves that.

I laid out above why this doesn't solve anything for products that haven't been developed with that in mind from the start. These are the majority of commercial software.

Support costs money. That isn't feasible for a ~3% market share OS.

That's part of the reason why many vendors didn't (and still don't) support OS X either, whereas those who did turned a tidy profit. It's certainly worth it if you just charge for it. And there's always the prospect of growing your market share with an underdeveloped platform.

Personally I think it's largely psychological. Vendors assume Linux users will likely not pay for professional software. But with more developers switching over that could change.

crdoconnor• 10 years ago

As a linux dev, I find regression testing my code on macs a royal pain in the ass. There are virtual machines but they're flaky.

brew also causes all manner of issues. It's not the best designed package manager in the first place and it also suffers by dint of not being the default mode of installing software on a mac.

Fnoord10• 10 years ago

The biggest issue isn't UI - GTK easily solves that.

A lot of commercially available software for Linux actually uses Qt, not GTK.

spangry• 10 years ago

I feel like it's not so much that there's a lack of good UI libraries (e.g. GTK, QT5), but rather a lack of good design. I've been using Linux exclusively since Windows 10 came out, and even big UI focussed projects like Gnome seem to make the most inexplicable design decisions. Anyone who has used Nautilus file manager for 10 minutes will know exactly what I'm talking about. Or look at the Gnome 'tracker' project: a technically elegant system that is completely unusable (unless you're comfortable writing cli SPARQL queries or interacting with the underlying sqlite database directly).

To be clear, I don't mean to be pointing the finger or blaming anyone. Rather, I think there's an inherent (but by no means unsolvable) problem with large, volunteer-driven free software/open-source projects: how do you make these projects attractive to good designers, in the same way that they are attractive to good engineers and developers?

This is just my gut feeling as someone who has used Linux daily for the past few years, so take with a big grain of salt...

alkonaut4• 10 years ago

GTK easily solves that

But I'd have to develop with GTK on windows to support that, which is a worse experience now than using e.g. XAML/WPF on Windows (which is declarative, has better HiDpi support etc). So I would hesitate to make a windows desktop app cross platform at that cost, unless the linux user base was large.

al2o3cr• 10 years ago

"There's very clearly no future here for me, but I'm switching to Linux sort-of by default"

You've described all the reasons it's currently sucking, but not any of the ones that would motivate you to switch to a platform you admit sucks.

cauterized• 10 years ago

Hardware isn't enough?

k__3• 10 years ago

I found it strange that they switched from Linux to OSX in the first place.

Where I started programming, every dev had a Linux machine.

I remember one gig, where I had to build a site with Mac that had these metal trackpads that give you instant RSI.

I thought, Macs, in a dev shop!? Did I enter the wrong door or something?

But then a few people around me started using MacBooks, especially in the start-up world it's considered good taste.

Insanity3• 10 years ago

Same here, a lot of people used linux and the machines at university all had a linux option to choose from apart from windows, which was the preferred choice for many courses.

I never really considered developping on a mac until I had to do it for my first programming job.

The thing is that it felt better than programming on Windows (because you do have a neat terminal), but it still felt inferiour to programming on linux.

It felt like being less in control on a mac and I for one did not like the UI of the mac at all. I'm sure the latter is purely subjective and the former is maybe due to me not looking around enough to figure out how to do so on a mac.

Still happy to not have to develop on those machines anymore though.

kayoone4• 10 years ago

Personally i came from Windows being a gamer for most of my teenager years so i used Windows to develop initially. But all solutions like using Xampp, over Linux VMs to Vagrant where painful in some way or another so i switched to Macs in 2009 and never looked back (still have a Windows Box for rare gaming). Today i run docker for my local projects but since OSX is Unix it works much better then on Windows.

No with Bash on Ubuntu on Windows, this could change though and Windows could become viable again.

k__3• 10 years ago

I come from windows too. I still use it on my private PC. But I always found Linux (Xubuntu) more pleasant to use for dev purposes

lallysingh4• 10 years ago

For quite a few years, it was tough getting a Linux laptop with working wifi that'd sleep and resume properly.

Also, some of us didn't like where gnome went.

k__3• 10 years ago

hehe, true.

I never used this sleep stuff, so I probably didn't notice.

I used xfce most of the time

ProblemFactory• 10 years ago

I found it strange that they switched from Linux to OSX in the first place.

Linux would still be my favourite OS for development, and on a "work-only" desktop that's still what I would use. But I have one laptop, that I use for both development work and personal stuff.

OSX comes with a proper unix base, with almost all "Linux tools" installable from homebrew. It's not as good as apt-get, but good enough. At the same time, OSX handles hardware and multimedia out of the box:

* No more xorg.conf hacking. Can hotplug external monitors via HDMI and displayport, and rescale my screen resolution smoothly.

* When I turn on my bluetooth headphones, they connect automatically, and adjust volume to my previous settings.

* Power-saving and sleep modes work. I killed my previous Linux laptop by closing the lid, putting it in my padded backpack, and boiling the battery because it didn't go to sleep.

And probably countless other such "casual comfort" benefits that work out of the box, but would need a few hours of config file hacking on Linux for each. I'd rather pay $1000 in Apple tax than spend time on it.

kps• 10 years ago

I'm still baffled that people use laptops for actual work.

efficax• 10 years ago

If you're a software dev in 99% of cases you don't need the extra juice you'd get from a desktop set up. For most of the day, I dock my laptop to a 4k display with an hhkb and a nice mouse. But if I want to wander somewhere else, work in a coffeeshop, hop on an airplane, sit in a lounge chair, I can just unplug it, and walk off with it.

Honestly I'm baffled that anyone doesn't use a laptop, except for people with extremely heavy computational workloads that can't be offloaded to a server cluster, ec2 instance or equivalent.

Insanity3• 10 years ago

you simply have to look around during workshops and speakings to see 90% of Apple systems

Are these perhaps apple events?

But seriously, that numbers seems hugely exagerated, at least from the events I have been at. He is probably talking about a specific field for these talks, but this is quite a silly statement imo.

kayoone4• 10 years ago

when i go to startup events/meetups it's not uncommon to see 80% Apple laptops.

Insanity3• 10 years ago

I have not been at events related to startups. Thank you for giving some insights into where they might use that many apple laptops.

The events hosted by my former university have a _few_ macs, but mostly I see people running Linux or Windows.

And then there are the microsoft-oriented events, but it is safe to say these do not count here :-)

chrisdhal• 10 years ago

At my local Groovy users group if people bring laptops the vast majority are Mac. At the last Groovy US conference virtually everybody had Macs (as in a non-Mac laptop stood out). These aren't Apple conferences or even startup meetings, these are real users.

vorg• 10 years ago

I guess it makes sense that the people still using a decaying language like Apache Groovy would be the same people slow to switch to a better OS.

dorian-graph• 10 years ago

Betteridge's law of headlines—and this article seems to have no substance either, a couple of sentences and then some links to some other blogs.

HugoDaniel• 10 years ago

If you are a web developer how do you test for safari outside of OSX ?

_ZeD_2• 10 years ago

I personally just ignore safari altogether. It's a "zero point something percent" of the clients in my works.

therealmarv6• 10 years ago

Seems you are not working on world wide mobile reachable websites where e.g. most of US users are browsing with Safari.

onion2k• 10 years ago

Use Browserstack (or one of the alternatives). The situation is exactly the same as every other browser you don't have direct access to, whether it's IE10 on Windows 7, Android Browser on a Galaxy S4, or a Windows phone, etc.

therealmarv6• 10 years ago

+1 for Browserstack. If you are open source developer ask them for sponsorship. Really friendly people there.

_ZeD_2• 10 years ago

better question: why were developers on Mac OS X to begin with? Honestly I think even Windows is a better os from a developer point of view.

dindresto• 10 years ago

I believe it's the combination of a UNIX-like system and the "It just works" / batteries included mentality. Also the amount of popular commercial applications available for OS X, as compared to Linux.

out_of_protocol• 10 years ago

As a fellow developer i say: Development on Windows is really REALLY painful. Any *nix is so much better. I chose OSX because it's "okay linux distro" ;) not real linux but close enough on practice

alkonaut4• 10 years ago

As a fellow developer i say: Development on Windows is really REALLY painful.

I think the statement really is "development in a unix/linux style on windows is really painful". If you like doing development with text editors and shells and have any tools that are command-line only then yes - it sucks on windows.

Windows development in an IDE is usually just fine, not to mention that it's often exactly the same as running the same IDE on linux.

hoodoof2• 10 years ago

I left Windows many years ago because of constant crashes, application freezes, multitasking so bad that I felt the user interface was not under my control, often being unable to shutdown due to some freeze etc etc etc

None of these things were problems with OSX.

Are things different in the Windows world?

tqkxzugoaupvwqr• 10 years ago

Better question: Why were developers on Windows to begin with?

I like the polished look of macOS, and its Unix roots which make it fairly easy to follow instructions for Linux on macOS.

rangibaby2• 10 years ago

Better question: Why were developers on Windows to begin with?

Because EVERYONE used Windows. That changed mid-00s (Ubuntu and x86 Macs).

Personally Firefox stoked a lot of interest in FOSS for me, and the mature version (2.0 was a big deal) came out around then too.

emsy• 10 years ago

It depends what you're developing for. These days, a lot of developers are web or app developers and for this purpose, Windows is terrible. Most app and web dev tools fit neatly into a *nix environment. You can get up and running with a few lines in the terminal, whereas you need a clumsy installer or cygwin and a manual with screenshots to start on Windows.

tannhaeuser• 10 years ago

I came to MacOS back in 2003 (PowerBook times) because

- it was Unix (I'm a vi/command line guy) and you could run all the backend software (Apache, Oracle, WebLogic/JBoss and other Java stuff such as Ecplise)

- yet you also could use commercial desktop apps (Adobe, MS Office, other graphics apps, the occasional game)

- great out of the box experience with optimal hardware support and no time consuming tinkering required; practical innovations like Expose, Spotlight, later also TimeMachine

Basically "Linux with QA and taste". And because using MacOS put a smile on your face.

Now Mac OS and Apple's latest computers only serve to demonstrate a lack of vision for the platform. Apple seems focused to integrate/unify iOS and MacOS, which might make sense in a beancounter way of thinking (eg. seeing MacOS as a cost center), but sends out the message that Apple is willing to loose "Pro" users as collateral damage.

I certainly hate to loose the ability to buy Apple equipment for my work, but without Apple taking really bold measures, Apple is a lost cause in the Pro market as it stands.

Price itself isn't so much an issue as is the feeling that you're being ripped off for rigs that lack any "pro" features, yet are as expensive or even more expensive than the "pro" stuff Apple used to make.

hoodoof2• 10 years ago

No one said they are.

This article makes the assertion with pure zero facts to back it up.

kayoone4• 10 years ago

Long term i don't think many will switch away from OSX, at least i don't see anyone complaining around me and most happily use macs. Sure there will be some, but i don't think it's significant. Those who prefer Linux have always used Linux anyway.

nkozyra2• 10 years ago

Personal opinion coming ...

To this date I really don't think there's a polished GUI/WM that can compete with OSX. The app ecosystem is vast but spotty. Even CLI work feels clunkier in any of the desktop distros. Is it better than 5 years ago? Maybe a bit. I just think with this huge community there'd be something as attractive and natural as OSX or Win10.

And that's ignoring the hardware aspect altogether. Yes, you can buy some very solid machines now, but every review I read about Mac-killer laptop hardware ends with a bunch of things that just don't work as well as a MBP.

tkubacki• 10 years ago

Always wondered how on earth anyone can be pleased with Finder. Compared to Nautilus it's just crap. Just opinion.

bantunes• 10 years ago

At least Finder doesn't crash with large sets of copy/paste file orders. It's really frustrating (GNOME 3.22).

John238322• 10 years ago

To this date I really don't think there's a polished GUI/WM that can compete with OSX.

Elementary Os is probably the closest, imo.

And that's ignoring the hardware aspect altogether. Yes, you can buy some very solid machines now, but every review I read about Mac-killer laptop hardware ends with a bunch of things that just don't work as well as a MBP.

I think the ideal linux setup would be a slightly older MPB with a good distro running on it. Prob Ubuntu for compatibility.

base6982• 10 years ago

I find it strange that you think the CLI is clunky on Linux.

Up until recently Mac shipped with an 3.x version of Bash. To star it had a version of sed that was in effect broken in several use cases. Mac also lacks the system profile capabilities of Linux such as perf and the new BPF tools.

Most of the tools like top, netstat, strace, and vmstat aren't as up to date on Mac either.

matwood• 10 years ago

Ships with sure, but iTerm2 and brew install bash/vim/etc... fix those issues.

marios• 10 years ago

Mac doesn't have perf, but it has DTrace. They added it in OS X 10.5 which was released 9 years ago.

Regarding the other tools you mention, keep in mind they are system tools. You cannot simply take the source of Linux netstat, compile it on your mac and call it a day. The data displayed by these tools is obtained from the kernel and different kernels have different interfaces (for instance, OpenBSD doesn't have /proc which is where Linux netstat gets information).

edtechdev• 10 years ago

I remember using OS X in the early years of its existence, and it was non-stop spinning beach ball of death. I switched to Windows for a while and then Ubuntu in 2006 which I still use. Everytime over the past 10 years that I try out a new Mac laptop or even desktop, the spinning beach ball still happens, even just clicking on a text field, despite faster processors, more RAM, SSD, etc. I see it in Windows 7 & 10, too, but basically never in Linux.

arghIdontwantto2• 10 years ago

I have no clue what you are doing, but I have never seen this happen by just clicking a textfield (Mac user since 2005).

I have my gripes with Apple, but to say everytime over the last 10 years, just clicking a textfield you get the beachball makes me doubt you. That or you are the unluckiest person I know that always touches a broken mac.

problems2• 10 years ago

Coming from someone who's used Windows and Linux for years, but bought a Macbook a few years back when they were the only ones offering high DPI displays - personally I found the OSX UI really clunky - confusing file manager which seems to prefer keeping icons in the same physical place even if they overlap others, weird buried menuing system. I can't even figure out how to properly maximize a window, I find myself pressing every different combination of shift+click, ctrl+click, cmd+click, etc. It's very confusing and annoying for someone who's never used it before.

I couldn't even figure out how to shutdown via the GUI for the first few months of using the system and would always open a terminal and run a shutdown command until a friend caught me doing it and told me how.

So - in my experience, any decent desktop environment feels a lot better than OSX. Be it Unity, KDE or Windows. CLI is much better on Linux or FreeBSD than OSX, simply look to the clunky hack package management systems used on OSX.

Maybe I'm past the point now where learning is easy for me, or maybe I just wasn't interested in learning OSX that much. But with all the "oh the GUI is so amazing" reviews I sort of assumed it would Just Work.

Eventually I just gave up, I had to get off it - the GUI was too annoying on OSX to use on a daily basis and I found myself always running my Bootcamp'd Windows. Last week I blew OSX away and replaced it with Ubuntu, it took a bit of hoop jumping to get all the hardware happy, but it works now and I'm never buying Apple again. As for better hardware - I'm probably buying Dell next time, they ship 4k displays now, better resolution than Apple and have better Linux support. Also, cheap accidental warranty and a better GPU at a lower price.

rz2k2• 10 years ago

How was MacOS's shutdown confusing? That sounds a little more like the version of Windows where it was intentionally hidden.

nottorp5• 10 years ago

This is why I moved from Linux to OS X. However, dear Apple are getting me concerned about their future because:

1. The main innovation in the newest MBPros is... an Emoji keyboard accessory? Okay, that might actually be useful but:

2. Worse, said newest laptops have battery issues to which Apple responds by removing the battery ETA indicator? That was actually useful since I knew how much battery life I could rely on while doing the same task.

3. Since 2013, they don't have a desktop for desktop (not web) developers any more.

Minis are too underpowered, iMacs are noisy under load and who knows how long they will last when kept heated the whole time, the Mac Pro is a video editing machine and little else.

Right now I'm doing fine with a MBPro and a hackintosh, but if they keep making dubious decisions about the laptops and not offering a developer's desktop, I'll have to consider Linux again.

timemachiner3• 10 years ago

I may be the only developer on HN that doesn't have this issue or on the entire internet for that matter, but I have no issues with battery life on my tMBP 15". I do all day development in eclipse and have music playing in the background. I think the battery life issues are overblown based on the few other devs around me that also use the new tMBP but I haven't personally asked them how long theirs last, just see they keep theirs unplugged for long periods of time too.

eridius• 10 years ago

an Emoji keyboard accessory

I can't tell if you literally think that's what it is, or if you're just trying to be dismissive. Emoji support in text fields is just one of the many things it does. It's a dynamic set of buttons that change depending on your task, and I actually really want it. I've been running a third-party app called Touché (https://red-sweater.com/touche/) which gives you the touch bar in a window on your computer, so I can see what things it offers (this isn't actually very useful for actually using, because if I have to switch to my mouse and click a button, there's probably a faster way anyway), and there's some cool stuff in there. What looks especially useful is if you're using Xcode to debug an app, the touch bar has a dedicated button that pauses the debugger, even if Xcode isn't in the foreground, and AFAIK there's no other way to accomplish this (even if you set up an applescript to pause the debugger and hook it up to a keypress, the app will still see you beginning to press the keys before it pauses, potentially changing the state that you were trying to debug at).

Since 2013, they don't have a desktop for desktop (not web) developers any more. […] iMacs are noisy under load

I haven't ever noticed my iMac being noisy. I'm pretty sure it's quieter than my laptop, and my laptop is pretty darn quiet.

and who knows how long they will last when kept heated the whole time

I'm really confused as to why you said this. If you think iMacs are noisy, then you think they have strong fans, which means there should be no problem with heat. Now of course I don't think iMacs are noisy, but I think they still do have good heat dissipation and have no worries whatsoever about lifetime.

If you want a developer's desktop, you really should look at an iMac.

djhworld• 10 years ago

I'm too entrenched in OSX to move, to put it bluntly. I have bought a lot of software that is OSX only

tluyben2• 10 years ago

I am using both Linux (Ubuntu) and Mac OS X all the time. The annoyance on Linux for me is very minimal; basically only the lack of iOS dev. If I can fix that somehow I would never use anything else. A while ago i installed Qemu with Mac OS X and that kind of worked, but was way too slow. Advantage is that USB ports work. Without that I will have to use both; if I dev for Android/Web/Desktop then I use my Ubuntu laptop; for iOS I open up my MacBook. Hope that will change in the future.

somecallitblues• 10 years ago

Everybody is talking about switching because the MBP is about $1000 more than they expected. But then you go and look at PC laptops and you realise that nothing out there is built like MBP. And there's seriously nothing wrong with 2013 MBP. You have to be doing something really insane to find it slow.

wineisfine2• 10 years ago

The buck stops at not offering a 15" Macbook Pro WITHOUT the touchbar. Heck: they could even charge the same price for with and without -- I wouldn't care.

But not even offering the option of having a normal keyboard with function keys... that's just ignorance.

mrits• 10 years ago

I bought my new MBP right before the revamp. Everyone at work was letting me know I could return it and get the new one. I was so happy I got the last good one just in time. I think this model will realistically get me through the next few years, but after that I'll seriously consider a move back to Linux or Windows.

satai• 10 years ago

Thge reasons of mine:

- better UI. Window management in i3 is much more usefull for me than macOS window management

- native Docker (partly solved for macOS now)

- control and security

- belief, that Apple goes the wrong direction

- HW choices

- SW I write is deployed on linux anyway

Bladtman2• 10 years ago

Are there any of those just-now-or.recently-switching devs in here? It would be interesting to hear their opinion, rather than guesswork.

hookshot• 10 years ago

This is my first week back on Linux after using OSX for ~4 years. I switched because it's cheaper. I needed more power and building a Linux desktop is way cheaper than buying Mac hardware.

So far: KDE is incredibly nice. I'm pretty blown away. Aesthetically I actually like it more than Aqua. The file manager is nice, the terminal is fine, there is a spotlight style search, virtual desktops, pretty much everything I would miss moving from OSX.

I miss 1Password the most. Right now I'm using a CLI client (passcards) to access my 1Password vault. I haven't setup notes yet but it seems like there are decent Notational Velocity alternatives. Relearning muscle memory to use CTRL instead of CMD is painful. I'm wasting a lot of time tweaking keyboard shortcuts.

tyfon• 10 years ago

Try KeePass, it works just about anywhere

Bladtman2• 10 years ago

Interesting. So for you the change was on desktop, not laptops. What changed you mind wrt price? I wasn't under the impression that apple computers have gotten more expensive than they were before?

titraprutr• 10 years ago

The title of this article should rather be: "Why I switched from Mac OS to Linux?"

tlocke2• 10 years ago

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned the moral case for using an Open Source OS over a proprietary one. Just to restate, Open Source software gives users the freedom to:

* Run the software for whatever purpose they want.

* Inspect the software so they can see what it's doing.

* Change the software however they want.

* Share the software with anyone.

Call me an idealist, but aren't these things important?

qntty• 10 years ago

s/open source/free/g

theandrewbailey• 10 years ago

What you described is free software, not open source.

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html

There are things that are open source, but not free, like the Unreal Engine.

tlocke2• 10 years ago

As far as I can make out from looking at the EULA:

https://www.unrealengine.com/eula

the Unreal Engine is not Open Source. Not least because you can't share the source code without restriction.

As I understand it, the difference between free and Open Source is a difference in philosophy rather than a difference in licensing. For Free Software people the importance lies in freedom, but for Open Source people the importance is that it's a better way to develop software.

For example, a Free Software person would always use free software even if was inferior to a proprietary alternative, because they wouldn't want to give up their freedoms. An Open Source person would use whichever is superior, regardless of licensing. I'm in both camps but I tend to use the term Open Source because Free is confusing because it means both 'no charge' and 'liberty'.

mbrock3• 10 years ago

I agree in substance, but I find arguments from moral principles mostly unconvincing, so I prefer to formulate it in different ways.

* Proprietary software makes me dependent on the whims of a business. If the business shuts down, stops updating its products, or changes their products in ways I dislike, I have to discard the investment I've made (time, money, learning, etc).

* Proprietary software makes it complicated to share my work tools with friends and even family.

* Proprietary ecosystems prevent me from learning. On the other hand, I am profoundly grateful for the learning opportunities given to me by the free software community ever since I was a teenager.

* Proprietary tools are hard to integrate with. For example, whenever a new version of Apple's mail program is released, the makers of the GPG plugin have to reverse engineer the changes before they (hopefully) can update their software.

* Proprietary tools often use proprietary formats, which prevents collaboration and contributes to the problem of digital rot.

And so on...

gravypod• 10 years ago

Those are all the basis of the moral arguments. If you watch Stalman speak on this topic he usually refers to this fact: If the users do not control the program, the program controls the users. If we do not have the right to maintain, update, and distribute our programs on our machines and to run them in any fasion we would like then the programs control us, we don't control them.

What could this mean? Well they could do something malicious (which they quite often do), they could allow something malicious to happen out of ignorance of the original programers and we'd have no way to fix these issues (think all the window's 0-days), they could even just revoke licenses of software that is in use for critical systems (think medical records).

A worse side effect then all of these is the one that is most egregious: It prevents younger generations who are starting to learn about computers from understanding how the lower part of the stack works. That's why, in my opinion, many older people have no problem delving into lower level systems code and many younger people today have a very hard time doing such. They've been robbed of the experiance of hacking their OS/Machine to shreds and loving every minute of it. Hardware, software, and even documentation is under lockdown and it's an assult on not only our principles but also our youth and self interests.

midnitewarrior• 10 years ago

Points 1,2 and 4 also apply to open source.

1. Open Source makes me dependent on the whims of a particular community. If the group has infighting or lack of activity, enjoy your abandonware. Yes, you could resurrect the project yourself, but that is a ridiculous burden for most situations.

2. It's often complicated sharing Open Source apps. They often require loads of tinkering, are poorly documented, and require specialized knowledge. Unless all of your friends and family are free software enthusiasts too, this isn't always simple.

4. Open source tools can also be hard to integrate with. You exchange licensing being a barrier for integration with lack of resources for designing good integration schemes. The larger projects can have significant resources to get around this.

therealmarv6• 10 years ago

There are nice to have. But having a better desktop experience (especially with photo related pro software) is more important for me than just going Open Source. And sometimes closed source does the better job.

freehunter6• 10 years ago

You're just trading your trust in a company to a trust in an organization of loosely affiliated individuals. I don't know C, so Linux being open source makes zero difference to me. I couldn't change it if I wanted to. I couldn't inspect it even if I wanted to. I couldn't run it for whatever purpose I want, only for whatever purpose people who know better than me have allowed for. And I can share the software, but the people I share it with will likely have the same limitations as me.

I'm still dependent on Intel providing the drivers for their wifi chips. I'm still dependent on AMD/Nvidia providing drivers for their video cards. I'm still dependent on a lot of non-libre software that I need in order to do my job.

All of your points are important from a theoretical standpoint, but that's based on the idea that the end user actually knows how to do any of that. And those skills are very, very uncommon.

whyileft2• 10 years ago

You are forgetting that there isn't an incentive for any of the makers of my software to trick or coerce me into doing things I don't want to do. With the profit motive removed free software has less of an incentive to hurt me.

renaudg• 10 years ago

I used to think like that in my idealistic 20s (card-carrying member of Free Software organizations, regular attendee of RMS talks, etc), and given the choice I'll still favor free / open source building blocks (especially in a professional context). I'm thankful for what the movement has brought us.

That said, growing up I've come to realize that one's time is valuable, life is too short and at the end of the day you have to pick your fights.

Even as hackers, there are times when we find ourselves with the "end user" hat on. Creative work for example (photo/music editing in my case) is already challenging and time-consuming enough not impose additional burdens upon yourself, like dealing with inferior / immature desktop Free software when there's an alternative that gets you there faster.

macOS in my view has always struck that rare balance between polished end-user tools and large amounts of familiar Unix / open source / standards based components under the hood to satisfy the hacker in us.

As most people I'm slightly worried about Apple's hardware vision lately, but the state of desktop Linux simply isn't good enough to warrant a switch back for demanding users yet.

matt40775• 10 years ago

As a fellow idealist, I feel the battle has shifted to online services, and it may actually be much more significant there than it ever was for desktops.

After all, looking back I can't easily point at actual harms created by (for example) photoshop's proprietary nature. But it's almost universally accepted that there's a danger in the walled gardens of Facebook or Google.

I'm hoping that the idealists will be able to defend/create open protocols and networks. There have been some successes, mostly when it was in the interest of industry heavyweights as well (i. e. Apple killing flash, html5 takings its place). Currently endangered is E-Mail and essentially dead is personal publishing.

tomelders2• 10 years ago

So this is finally the year that Linux will take over. Again.

I see no evidence that dev's are switching to Linux for their dev machine.

And this recent peak in anti-apple sentiment stinks to me of the same mentality that led to Britain leaving the EU and Trump becoming president. It goes along the lines of...

"This thing isn't perfect by the definition of perfect that matters to me. So I declare it to be fundamentally and irrevocably broken. It should be thrown away and everyone should do this other ill thought through thing that I like"

There's a case to be made for Linux, but if your case is always presented with an "Apple sucks" pre-amble, then I think you're really just a fanboy.

echion• 10 years ago

Wait, you're tarring op with Brexit and Trump, but op's the fanboy?

[edit] To be fair, op/article mention no statistics to support the assertion that "developers are switching from Mac OS X to Linux", so on that basis I think it's fair to say the piece is pretty anecdotal or fluffy. But there are plenty of reasons why people switch from OS X to Linux (see other comments, for example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13317879 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13317234 ).

fetbaffe• 10 years ago

Current anti-javascript sentiment that is going on? Yes, you guessed it, Trumpism.

Oh, you don't like React? Damn Brexiteer!

Future is here.

tomelders2• 10 years ago

Im talking about the faulty logic and wooly thinking that underpins all of those issues. Its all a symptom of that problem.

billsmithaustin• 10 years ago

I'm not sure name-calling is the best way to make your case. Couldn't someone who defends Apple against their shortcomings be written off as an Apple fanboy too?

blablabla123• 10 years ago

The thing is that around 5 years ago Apple made OS X really convenient for developers. Like Ruby, Python, Emacs preinstalled. Now they removed the Escape key which is really bad for voluntary and even involuntary vi users (SCM messages etc.) - of course there's a fix but WTF. Also the Graphic cards in the Macs aren't exactly top notch unless you spend 2000$+. Not to mention all these safety belts making usage of tools like dtruss/dtrace complicated and risky. Switching to Linux as soon as there's a convenient opportunity...

John238322• 10 years ago

And this recent peak in anti-apple sentiment stinks to me of the same mentality that led to Britain leaving the EU and Trump becoming president. It goes along the lines of... "This thing isn't perfect by the definition of perfect that matters to me. So I declare it to be fundamentally and irrevocably broken. It should be thrown away and everyone should do this other ill thought through thing that I like"

I don't really think that is a good analogy... If I move to linux, as long as I have the tools available, I just affect myself. The move to Brexit has wider reaching effects than just personal ones.

That being said, linux is becoming more and more accepted in the mainstream. MICROSOFT supports .NET Core on linux. Pretty much every language/IDE/tooling kit is supported on linux first. Most devs are probably using Macs like linux boxes anyway, with Homebrew and Macports.

I think previously the barrier to entry/change was higher going from Osx to linux. That barrier is pretty much gone. linux installations, especially on current/slightly older mac hardware, is plug and play. People seem to be upset about the moves that Apple is making, and for those people (admittedly this may be a vocal minority), it's easier than ever to switch. So they are.

antouank• 10 years ago

I'm happy the new MBP sucked.

Saved lots of money, and I discovered Arch linux. Spent a couple of days and made a much better personalised OS environment than what OSX dictates to use. Plus, I learned lots in the process.

vi4m• 10 years ago

Until you try to do first presentation on some conference, when your connected display crashes and you start typing xrandr / fighting Wayland/xorg drivers ... I see it all the time, never happened to Macs.

j7ake• 10 years ago

Also setting up printer, external monitors, battery saver (if you want to close your lid and not worry about whether that will drain the battery), and updating your packages and realizing something broke right before an important deadline.

whyileft2• 10 years ago

Can we dial back the FUD? I present all the time with my Linux laptop that does not require any dongles to connect to HDMI, VGA and DVI projectors. Oh yeah and airplay works just fine too. Been that way for as long as I can remember. This isn't 1997.

hydandata7• 10 years ago

You have to realize that MacOS, Windows, even typical Linux Desktop is not an optimal environment for a professional programmer, or for any other computer based job which involves a lot of writing, reading and maintaining flow state.

The reason is that these environments are designed with user-friendliness in mind. Now what does that mean? it means that stuff should be easy to find, simplified enough for somebody who is learning how to interact with the machine, trying to remember what, where and how. As a professional programmer you should not care at all about that. You are not a user, you are a frigging master of the computer universe.

You should care about avoiding unnecessary clutter so that you can focus easier, minimizing time from thought to action to avoid breaking the flow, about flexibility so you can adapt the environment to your personal needs and increase productivity. Erik Naggum nailed it long time ago [0].

You can have a tablet and do your non-work related activities there, iOS, Windows, whatever, but when you are working use your workstation! if you don't have one create it. You will be amazed by how much more productive you can be, how much happier you can be.

I use StumpWM, Emacs, Conkeror, Ergodox with a custom layout and blank keys, and a trackball. The only thing a "user" can do on my machine is move the pointer and pull out the power cord, but in my hands this thing flies!

[0] http://www.xach.com/naggum/articles/3065048088243385@naggum....

Edit: Let me be clear, this is my personal journey from Windows to MacOS and finally to a custom setup on Linux and the reasoning behind it. I certainly do not mean to preach.

I concede that thinking hard is and always will be the main component of professional work, but perhaps from time to time we should ponder what an environment could be like if it was made for professionals not for users. If we simply keep accepting what is available and let others think for us we will only get more of what Apple does and less of what might be best for us. We are not the majority of Apple users, and probably never will be, it is not in their best interest to put us ahead of them when making various decisions.

mbernstein2• 10 years ago

Your preferences aren't necessarily optimal for others in the same way that macOS, Windows, and Linux may not be optimal for various people. Many assumptions about what a "real" developer is.

I don't develop on Windows, but I know a few engineers that use Windows are some of the best, most productive engineers I've met. I went to college with one that's been at a few high profile places and live-streamed and his workflow is pretty amazing.

As for me - environment is never the bottleneck for me when it comes to solving hard problems, and those are the problems I care about.

hydandata7• 10 years ago

My preferences are just that, yours should be yours. My point is that if you are choosing where to work, you should choose something that is optimized for your field of work and for your demands as professional, not a mass market solution which by definition cannot be.

Klathmon• 10 years ago

I'd like to think i'm one of those windows devs.

All the servers I work with are linux based, I wouldn't know the first thing about managing a windows system, but i'm significantly more productive in windows than I am on a linux workstation.

I just can't seem to find a stable well-working linux workstation after years of trying. I end up spending more time fixing my display manager or messing with config files broken in an update, or farting around with driver issues and running the multiple screens than I do actually getting shit done.

I'm now using windows 10. It works great. I have my 3 monitors, beefy hardware, and just about everything I use is cross-platform or web based anyway, so it all works great. Throw in git-for-windows so I have a linux-ish environment (at least a handful of the GNU tools and most of bash), and i'm happy as a pig in shit. (Yeah, I do know about the bash-on-ubuntu-on-windows thing, but it's not quite ready for me yet)

nailer• 10 years ago

Windows has borrowed a lot of the tiling concepts from nix WMs recently. I spend most of my time with 2 or 3 apps tiled (browser, Sublime, Conemu).

Also the flat look of Windows compares well to the decoration used as default in Linux WMs - what purpse to the shiny bits behind all these icons serve other than making them look less distinct? http://cialu.net/images/apple-linux-desktop.png

GFK_of_xmaspast2• 10 years ago

As a professional programmer, this is total bunk.

awt5• 10 years ago

Did you read the Naggum link? He is not easily dismissed.

alkonaut4• 10 years ago

I launch my IDE, and that is a customisable interface created specifically for developers. In my code/debug cycle it launches the desktop app I'm developing, (which is a user interface created specifically for another type of professional).

I agree that ergonimics is important, especially in terms of hardware. For developers, hardware is screens and keyboards, and pointing devices. As for operating systems, window managers etc., I couldn't care less. I basically don't use the OS while developing. I launch one app and that's it.

I'd go so far as to say that if my IDE would run on only one OS, then my professional machine would simply run that OS. And I'd be fine with it. If I'm using XCode today but Visual Studio tomorrow, I'd be happy to switch. The IDE matters, the hardware matters, but the OS not so much.

hydandata7• 10 years ago

I'd go so far as to say that if my IDE would run on only one OS, then my professional machine would simply run that OS

My workstation is my IDE. Or as close to it as I can make it.

As for operating systems, window managers etc., I couldn't care less

And we should not have to. So I personally go out of the way to rid my workstation of stuff that is not what I care about.

noir_lord• 10 years ago

This is largely my approach, I very rarely need to leave intellij since it has plugins for everything I use and an integrated terminal, that said I still prefer Linux (xfce via xubuntu) to any off the other OS's when outside the IDE.

I also use the hell out of bash for building and orchestration.

gurkendoktor• 10 years ago

When I'm in an IDE, I still use Dash for documentation (macOS only), an external Git GUI (best selection on macOS) and a Terminal (copy/paste is easier on macOS).

Even if I did it all from the IDE, I'd need a good mail client and a good calendaring app to work in a team. These differ from OS to OS. I love scroll through my IDE with my Magic Trackpad, boom, locked into macOS again.

I've looked into switching operating systems on my professional machine because I spend 95% of my time in IntelliJ, but even then the underlying OS matters more than I thought. Of course, YMMV.

awt5• 10 years ago

Out of curiosity where did you first hear of Naggum? My route to his threads was a bit circuitous. His work as extended my career, to say the least.

hydandata7• 10 years ago

Same here, if one sees through the volatility of his posts, there is definitely a lot to learn. I discovered them after reading his obituary by Kent Pitman.

linkmotif5• 10 years ago

You are not a user, you are a frigging master of the computer universe.

Great line and great comment. I've seen people like you and it's always remarkable to watch. Some day when I have time I hope to spend acclamating to this type of environment. For now my best approximation is tmux/Vim.

lobo_tuerto• 10 years ago

Why can't I have my cake and eat it too?

I really like my development environment in Ubuntu. I like the power user stuff + desktop user friendliness in one place.

And I tried to like OSX, I even bought a MacBook Pro Retina, used it like a year or two but ended installing Linux on it a couple of weeks ago, heh.

Aaargh203182• 10 years ago

The reason I, as a professional programmer, use macOS is exactly because it's user friendly and gets out of the way.

I'm supposed to work on the code my boss is paying me to work on, not tinkering with some OSS project to get it just the way I like it. Basically, my OS needs to be able to launch an IDE, a shell and not bother me with irrelevant shit ('Windows just found an USB mouse...').

hydandata7• 10 years ago

What I run today would have looked the same 20 years ago. How many times have Desktop Environments changed during this time? One has to constantly devote time to keep up with changes mostly aimed at typical consumers, and sometimes they are detrimental because they are aimed at the majority.

Setting up something complex definitely takes time and has its cons but that time is definitely finite, I am not saying that I magically got to my setup, it did not take me a year either. And once it is yours, it is yours. Moreover, when the environment is easily extensible like Emacs and StumpWM are it is easy to mold them to a new task that lands on your table.

markatkinson• 10 years ago

My Ergodox arrives tomorrow. A little nervous but keen to migrate from a Microsoft Ergonomic to a mechanical with programmable and macro combos.

hydandata7• 10 years ago

Nice! I learned to touch type two years ago, and I still practice from time to time. Here is what switching to Ergodox from Model M looked for me https://postimg.org/image/i2791e2fn/ hopefully it will be easier for you :) I should add that after mastering it I type way faster than before, with better accuracy and also have no pain while doing it. Ability to easily tweak the layout is awesome. I use home row shift f.e. and it is super comfortable.

eva1984• 10 years ago

You have to realize that MacOS, Windows, even typical Linux Desktop is not an optimal environment for a professional programmer

It is pretty subjective though. And what you can create is pretty much irrelevant to what platform you are using, it more about your brain.

jlg234• 10 years ago

You have to realize that MacOS, Windows, even typical Linux Desktop is not an optimal environment for a professional programmer, or for any other computer based job which involves a lot of writing, reading and maintaining flow state.

I had to do professional sw-dev work in windows and osx environments. Both are not primarily aimed at sw devs, but can easily be coerced to be almost as efficient an interface as any unix. I still prefer my fbsd with evilwm, but the alternatives are not this bad.

sidlls• 10 years ago

I'm a programmer, and I get folks to pay me for doing it. I reckon that makes me a "professional" (for some value of "professional").

The kinds of programming I do:

1. Machine learning

2. Distributed infrastructure (systems programming type stuff--message queues, data pipeline services and such, for example)

3. Scientific computing

4. Game development

You know what "environment" I find suits me just fine? A terminal window with a combination of some muxer (e.g. tmux) and emacs, in the default WM/GUI environment that comes with whatever flavor of Linux I'm working with. I don't need a lot of extreme tailored environment to do my work and be efficient at it.

I also don't think I'd care one way or another whether a "user" could use my laptop or not. It wouldn't be a point of pride for me if they couldn't, or if they could. I simply don't care.

GrinningFool5• 10 years ago

I'd heard of neither StumpWM nor Conkeror. The WM looks like almost exactly waht I've been trying to find (currently using Awesome... it works for me because I know it well, but it breaks in weird ways too).

How up-to-date is Conkeror in terms of handling "things most modern websites use"?

In any case, thanks for posting this - it gave me some more things to look at.

tnones• 10 years ago

you are a frigging master of the computer universe.

Strange because this is exactly why I love OS X. Because it's empowering and gets out of the way.

For instance, it's the only OS where multi-touch gestures for desktop/window management works instantly and controls everything as I'm doing it. A common thing to do is to select some objects on one desktop, click and drag them with the trackpad, then swipe with 3 additional fingers to move to another desktop, before dropping. It just works.

The browser works like a tablet and I can zoom and pan and navigate back easily. The OS is smart enough to reposition all my windows to their previous location when I unplug and replug an external monitor, instead of giving me a bunch of cropped apps in the corner. Renaming or moving a file makes apps pay attention and save to the new location. Preferences apply just by changing them, labels and controls everywhere update to track underlying changes, every listing is live. I can instantly preview anything with a spacebar tap, without losing keyboard focus on the finder window I was working with. Even the little icon in the titlebar of a document window is interactive, letting me drag a file I have open to a new place without making me go find it again, or right click it to get a dropdown menu to all parent paths.

Plugging in devices and drives, managing audio inputs and outputs, managing network interfaces and VPNs, backing up to external devices, it's all right there and instantly accessible, without 3 layers of legacy control panels or a bunch of config files to go dive through.

All of these things preserve my flow state by letting me manipulate the objects and the state of my desktop without having to make a chore out of it, by acting exactly like the natural and traditional objects around me. When I turn on the light, I don't open the "light preferences", click a checkbox and hit "Ok", I don't go edit /etc/light.conf, I just switch on the light. Why "professionals" think it should be any other way keeps amazing me, but then, I recall a study a while back that said that when it takes a lot of small steps to perform a particular task, it seems faster, even if it actually isn't.

st3v3r3• 10 years ago

I'm sorry, but I cannot agree with your point. A professional programmer should not value things being easy to use? What kind of fake machismo bullshit is that? I should want to take the hard way every time I do something?

tzury• 10 years ago

Here is my setup (switched from ThinkPads/Ubuntu to MBP 5 years ago).

MacBook Pro with Ubuntu Server in VirtualBox.

All git repositories, runtime env. is linux.

Editing is done with my Editor of choice over SSHFS, editing linux files directly.

This is the very best setup I have had for decades (yep, I am that old...).

No current Linux distro can beat Apple when it comes to stability and peripherals support. Yet, my actual work is still runs on a native Linux as I like.

sevagh• 10 years ago

Is it native Linux or VirtualBox?

massysett2• 10 years ago

Come on, this piece is junk. He says people are switching to Linux because Apple hardware sucks. These rants are typical but would be much better if people identified the glorious PC hardware they are using. So I looked for that here, and it turns out he is still using Apple hardware. He then does not identify a single OS X flaw or a reason he loaded Linux onto his Apple hardware.

Maybe what HN needs is a periodic "Apple Sucks, post your rants here" posting, just like the periodic "who's hiring" posts, because it's clear that "Apple Sucks" is the only reason for all these posts that completely lack any interesting content.

TulliusCicero• 10 years ago

It used to be that Apple was pretty dominant in creating decent laptop hardware, but these days machines like the XPS 13 and Spectre are very competitive.

When we replace my wife's 2012 MacBook Air I think we'll probably get a Windows machine, the latest MacBook refresh was pretty disappointing.

nemacol• 10 years ago

I agree. This article is basically click bate for people that are not fans of apple (me). It never answer the question posed by the title. The author has not even switched off of Apple totally... but predicts that they will when funds are available.

kls3• 10 years ago

The big three for me where:

The discontinuation of the 17 inch MacBook Pro

The soldered in ram.

And the final one was with the last refresh where they held the top of the line model at 16GB of ram.

As a note these where probably all sound business decisions they just chip away at my ideal machine. Which is a large screen machine, with a lot of horse power so that I can simulate an entire network environment locally to eliminate variables as well as use in a disconnected environment.

linkmotif5• 10 years ago

These rants are typical but would be much better if people identified the glorious PC hardware they are using. So I looked for that here, and it turns out he is still using Apple hardware.

Yeah, this stuff is really tiresome. What a bandwagon people have going now.

freehunter6• 10 years ago

Remember back in 2015 when it was cool to be anti-Microsoft on HN? Somewhere in 2016, maybe after WWDC, suddenly the Surface was in and Apple was out. The consensus changed almost overnight, anyone using Apple wasn't a hacker anymore. Either you're on Windows wishing you were using Linux, or you're on macOS wishing you were on Windows wishing you were using Linux. And god forbid you buy any new Apple hardware, you dirty shill. Facebook machine, not a professional, MacBook Pro Air and all that.

jlg234• 10 years ago

These rants are typical but would be much better if people identified the glorious PC hardware they are using.

As someone who's never bought Apple HW (but used it, when paid for by employers, as secondary devices): There is no "glorious" PC hardware anymore (though, the top-of-the-line thinkpads from about 2000 were amazing (a20p, anyone?).

But today, compared to Apple's pricing, they are so cheap that I can get equivalent HW for half the price (equivalent wrt performance, not manufacturing quality!). I can have it serviced around the world without having to find a vendor-specific shop. And if it really is FUBAR, I can invest the 50% I saved on the initial purchase and get a brand new, next generation PC.

lmm• 10 years ago

I've got a Surface Book and it's glorious.

Chathamization• 10 years ago

But today, compared to Apple's pricing, they are so cheap that I can get equivalent HW for half the price (equivalent wrt performance, not manufacturing quality!).

How true is this? For instance, I often see the XPS brought up as an alternative to the MPB, but whenever I look into it, it seems like the price is comparable for similar hardware configurations.[1]

[1] http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/apple-macbook-pro-13-...

hguant2• 10 years ago

There is no "glorious" PC hardware anymore

Just built a PC at home for gaming and Windows tinkering, and I have to say - it feels pretty glorious.

Also, and I feel like a shill for having said this so many times, the new Razer Blade laptops, Surface Book Pro, and Surface Studio have successfully plucked the "top tier industrial design" mantle from Apple, in terms of innovation and coolness factor (which, as Apple has proved time and again, really does matter).

Which is more interesting - a massive touch screen computer that moves weightlessly, with a hockey puck sensor that makes those cool radial menus we see in every other science fiction movie, or a laptop with a touch screen above the keyboard?

I think there is a great future for 'glorious PC hardware', both for enthusiasts like myself who build their own rig, and from companies like Microsoft, ASUS and the like, who have had their clock cleaned by Apple for the last few years and have finally come up with a response that's not just "copy the MacBook" (and not "novelty for novelty's sake" either).

a3n• 10 years ago

But today, compared to Apple's pricing, they are so cheap that I can get equivalent HW for half the price (equivalent wrt performance, not manufacturing quality!).

Agreed. With Linux I can control the price of my hardware. I can move my environment, the part I care about, up and down the price spectrum as I care to and where I can afford.

I care much more about what I'm doing with the abstract "computer" in front of me than what it physically is. Particularly something as fast-changing and fast-obsoleting as computer hardware. And obsolescence does matter, as newer softer slowly comes to expect newer hardware.

jclardy• 10 years ago

I took a look into linux recently, as a Mac user for the past 10 years. Ended up buying a Chromebook to mess around with it and it is pretty nice, but desktop linux is still missing so much software that I use regularly in macOS.

Also, finding suitable notebook hardware to run linux on is still a nightmare unless you enjoy spending time debugging the device that is supposed to improve your productivity. All the unique hardware is missing drivers (SP4, surface book) and things like touch screens and wifi drivers across more "normal" hardware is still finicky.

My main gig is iOS dev, so I obviously can't completely swap, but there just isn't any comparable hardware out there that can just run ubuntu out of the box (minus some exceptions like that dell developer edition xps.)

jeena• 10 years ago

Could you make a (short) list of the apps (for devs?) missing so we could help you perhaps to find alternatives if there are any?

igor_filippov2• 10 years ago

Many articles about people switching from Mac to Linux laptop begin this way: "It's great, but my laptop can't handle sleep mode properly, network stops working from time to time...etc etc But I'm very happy!".

kls3• 10 years ago

The issue may not be the current hardware he is on, but rather Apple has put their (developer machine) future in doubt by releasing lackluster upgrades to their MacBook Pro line and neglecting it's Mac Pro line for a long time. Thus signaling that they may not be the best option for development longevity.

I know it's a decision point of mine, as after the last MacBook Pro release, I decided that my next hardware refresh will most likely be a PC based laptop running one of the BSD's. I was really hoping for a 32 GB ram option. With my need for virtualization and needing to run other machines 16 is getting a little light. I was really disheartened when they went to the soldered ram as it constrains one to the max ram offered via Apple. I just cannot justify buying another 16gb laptop so it's kind of the straw that broke the camels back for me.

It is apparent to most that they are moving away from the needs of the developer (in relation to hardware) and many of us don't want to be further constrained by those decisions. I have no ill will towards Apple, just stating my reasoning. They made a business decision and I don't factor into that decision as the best course of action. I therefore have to make the best business decision for myself and factor in how I adjust. It sucks, I like Apple products and will miss OSX but the lack of some hardware capabilities in now outweighing the benefits of the OS.

My next machine will most likely be a Sager Laptop running a BSD.

illumin8• 10 years ago

He says he switched from OS X to Linux years ago, which I assume is long before 2013 when the trashcan Mac Pro was released.

This article is garbage. If he likes Linux, that's fine, but don't pretend that Apple's actions in 2016 caused him to travel back in time years ago and switch to Linux...

igor_filippov2• 10 years ago

It's the same people who participate in various "challenges" and play Pokemon Go claiming that it's good for your health. Many people just need some hoaxes to consume their free time.

bsaunder2• 10 years ago

Apple hardware does suck (now) AND its over priced. The OS and apps are starting to suck too (IMHO). I switched a month ago from MBP. I commented elsewhere (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13318525) on this thread with more details and my reasons and new hardware specs.

CoolGuySteve3• 10 years ago

10 years ago, there was no PC hardware that even came close the weight, dimensions, and build quality of the MacBook Air.

Nowadays, PC "ultrabooks" like the XPS13 and UX305 are similar in size and build quality but come in a variety of configurations with better battery life and a choice between low power low res screens and high power high res screens. And they're significantly cheaper.

Linux works perfectly on the Intel chipsets these computers use as well with open source drivers from Intel themselves. I haven't had any problems with Ubuntu, my install is pretty much stock Unity.

I used to work for Apple and still have Apple stock. As a stock holder, I think they need to make a similar leap with their computers as they did back with the MacBook Air.

The two things I would most want from them are a 40" curved screen iMac and and a MacPro replacement that looks something like the Razor Blade Stealth where a full powered GPU attaches via USB-C. I mention these 2 designs because they require a lot of tinkering to get working on the PC side and while Apple doesn't really make anything new, they do polish existing technology extremely well.

thebspatrol• 10 years ago

The build quality still usually is a narrow miss. Namely, non-apple manufacturers LOVE to cut corners by using plastic on the bottom or more fragmented case design. Touchpads are always iffy too.

Does anyone know of any non-apple machines that truly are at parity in build quality? The new Thinkpad X1 looks nice.

sanderjd• 10 years ago

I have still yet to find a trackpad that is even close to as good as Apple's. This has been the main thing keeping me on Apple's hardware for about 5 years now.

swrobel• 10 years ago

And why the curved screen?

antfarm• 10 years ago

10 years ago, there was no MacBook Air ;)

oneweekwonder• 10 years ago

XPS13 and UX305
And they're significantly cheaper.

I tend to disagree, when I shopped around I found the zenbook and xps 2 to 3 times the price of a mac air.

serge2k4• 10 years ago

40" curved screen iMac

why?

MacPro replacement that looks something like the Razor Blade Stealth where a full powered GPU attaches via USB-C.

oh god why?

both of these just seem like gimmicks instead of just making a top notch dev machine.

Lots of ram, good CPU, discrete GPU option, fast SSD, decent port selection, great battery life (tweak machine options to get a bit more or less, but always good).

That's why the 2013 was such a great machine. Mine is still easily good enough today.

Now we have gimmicky touchbars, the ram hasn't increased, the CPUs are older models, they have dropped a bunch of useful ports (HDMI, magsafe power supplies), and the battery life isn't even what it used to be.

A big discrete GPU box that works over thunderbolt is just a gimmick. Windows laptop makers do stuff like that but their touchpads are still pretty much meh.

iaml• 10 years ago

better battery life

If we're comparing those laptops running linux with macbooks running macos, I highly doubt it.

LyndsySimon3• 10 years ago

I... agree.

Many of the recent articles that have been posted about Apple's new Macbook Pro line have been very low-quality compared to the rest of HN. The comments here provide an order of magnitude more value than the articles themselves.

They're more or less serving as a "discuss this currently controversial topic" thread; the articles are irrelevant. While I think they could be easily replaced with a new feature in HN itself, the current solution is working. I'm OK with the article spam.

danjoc• 10 years ago

These rants are typical but would be much better if people identified the glorious PC hardware they are using.

Razer makes really nice hardware. Visit a Microsoft store or Fry's electronics to see some in person. Aluminum build, current generation CPUs and GPUs. NVidia GPUs not the garbage Apple ships. 32GB RAM and RAID 0 available on the Pro. Hands down superior hardware. Good value for the money.

He then does not identify a single OS X flaw or a reason he loaded Linux onto his Apple hardware.

I can easily install developer software on Linux that is blocked by Gatekeeper and SIP on Mac OS X. Every time I update, I have to delete /usr/bin/git again because it's just an Apple stub and I have no intention of installing Apple's developer tool package that is gigabytes large. It's bad enough that the last OS X system update was 1.7GB.

Furthermore, you can't even install Linux on a new MacBook or MacBook Pro. Apple transposed digits in the PCI class ID for the SSD so it's not even recognized as an SSD by the installer.

Then there's Docker. Docker == Linux.

rconti• 10 years ago

A several-sentence anecdata blogpost from someone too inexperienced to realize people were switching FROM Linux TO OS X in the first place?

And that steps on its own thesis by admitting he still uses Apple hardware, so he'll be one of the "90%" you see using Apple systems?

How did such a terrible "article" get upvoted in the first place?

alfalfasprout• 10 years ago

Not only that, but I think the hate on the new MBP is rather unjustified. I'm writing on my work 13" 2015 MBP and I have a personal 15" 2016 MBP Touchbar. The new MBP weighs a similar amount, the screen is beautiful, and it feels much faster (thanks to the great SSD). Sure, the battery life has issues but I expect that this will be rectified in the next few months.

Fact is, I can't find a single Windows laptop right now with anything close to the high quality feel of a MBP right now. I love working in Linux so the OS isn't an issue... but it's like every Windows laptop I use feels plasticy or flimsy in some way.

OSX has its own fair share of issues, sure. But fact is, it's productive if you're a developer. With Windows (until WSL matures a lot) you find yourself using hacky workarounds and VMs to get stuff done.

spronkey3• 10 years ago

Hmm, I've spent a fair bit of time with the 2016 MBPs and have owned and used many Mac laptops over the past decade.

I wouldn't agree that there are no machines with "anything close" to the feel. I agree that the MBP is still at the top, but the Dell XPS, Thinkpad X1, X2x0, X4x0s are close in case, keyboard but lose in speakers and display. HP's top end models are close. Surface Book is extremely close.

To be honest, the removal of MagSafe actually drops the overall "quality feel" of the 2016 Mac a step below the older Macs for me. As does the removal of certain other features over the years - such as the battery lights, pulsing sleep light, charging indicator light, tiny microphone input flowers replaced with single larger holes, inbuilt IR remote, etc. I would classify these things as "design quality" - so possibly not the build quality of what is there, but definitely contributed to the machines feeling like they are a cut above what else is out there.

The fact that I can't upgrade the Mac at all is basically a deal breaker for me. I thought I could live with it, but after four years of having personal Macs (Air) that can't be upgraded, and work MBPs, seeing my spend on computer hardware literally double thanks to shorter new machine cycles, higher cost of "upgrades", and reduced resale value, I've had enough. Not only that, but my machine satisfaction drops a lot near the end of a machine's usable life (where previously it would be quite linear as I periodically upgraded things), and having to make compromises on storage etc is just too much.

Whether OSX is productive as a developer depends greatly on what your particular environment is. In many cases I've observed that Linux can be more streamlined for everyday development, and the disruption that is OSX software updates has increased to the point where it's just as bad as Linux updates. If you can take advantage of Visual Studio for your dev and use some of the integrated toolchains there, you may even get superior productivity to OSX.

BuuQu9hu• 10 years ago

Lots of other things suck too, lets not discriminate against particular things that suck.

ohstopitu• 10 years ago

I used to depend on OS X for Sketch and iOS dev, but with the release of Figma, that has changed quite a bit.

I do hope that Figma would release an Linux app to use system fonts and allow for upload of slack files that use weird fonts for example.

Apart from that (and iOS development), Linux is a perfect dev environment (ofc we still need a few more apps like a good gui git client - I use Fork on mac and I love it), but Gitkranen can be a situable alternative till a good client comes along.

Seriously though, if someone is willing to offer XCode over the web, or even a cheap dedicated vm (most VMs i've seen are insanely expensive for what they provide), that'd be great

Figma - https://www.figma.com Fork - https://git-fork.com/

ssijak• 10 years ago

Simple stuff that should work 100% of the time without bugs and without me needing to intervene work on osx like they should. On linux there is always some little problem that bugs you from time to time, or some inconsistency, or some app that does not work, etc etc. Nothing that I can not sort out (I mainly use Arch linux when I use it on the desktop, on servers Ubuntu and Centos), but at a point in time, I started valuing my time much more so I switched to OSX for developer machine.

pps• 10 years ago

I'm using both OS X and Linux Mint every day since 2012 (and before that Windows & Ubuntu I don't even know how long). There is no way for me to switch completely to Linux, it is just not enough, I'm working WAY faster in OS X, and the experience is so much more pleasurable.

S_A_P• 10 years ago

In the 15 or so years Ive been writing code, Ive never had a moment where I was like, damn, I cant write this code I am tasked to write because my damn operating system is not adequate. I use Windows, Linux and OSX/MacOS, and I am pretty agnostic on the whole deal. I have use cases for each, and cant really understand the religious nature of this discussion.

Cant we call this sort of article what it really is? Im mad because I dont think apple is thinking of my needs anymore. It could be because Ive changed or theyve changed, but either way Im going to write an article to to justify my feelings, even if my arguments dont hold water.

loup-vaillant6• 10 years ago

I have use cases for each, and cant really understand the religious nature of this discussion.

Linux: Free Softwaaare! (My favourite)

MacOS: It Just Wooorks! (And is damn pretty)

Windows: Gaaames! (And a host of other programs)

Another way to look at it is, Linux is Hippie, Windows is Business, and MacOS is Beauty.

Of course it will get religious: if you deliberately chose one platform, you likely care about its strongest suit enough to shun the other two. Most free software advocates will use GNU/Linux, and urge everyone to follow suit. They're virtuous. Most people who need such and such software will use Windows, because they have work to do, dammit. They're practical. Apple users are… I don't know, loyal? Apple does have strong followers.

Me, I still feel a little guilty about my Windows desktop. But… games…

WayneBro5• 10 years ago

I am a die-hard Windows user and I don't care about games as much. In my opinion, Windows is just the best all around OS.

While I do use Mac and Linux wherever third parties require it - I prefer Windows by far. I also think it's the most practical choice for anybody that needs a solid general purpose OS. Some other thoughts:

- I like the Microsoft business plan the best - they don't want to lock me into hardware like Apple and their stuff isn't infinitely fragmented like Linux.

- Windows has the best all around UI and they cater to power users. Meanwhile, Apple hates power users and Linux thinks that "power user" means programmer/beta tester.

- The vast, vast majority of businesses use Windows desktops and not Mac or Linux. These are my customers.

- There are very few useful things that I can't do with Windows. Meanwhile, I can find hundreds of things that Mac and Linux can't do (or can't do easily/well) that Windows can.

saghm• 10 years ago

I'm a hardcore Linux user, but free software has very little to do with my rationale for using it (although I do in general prefer open source software to proprietary, I've found I'm more worried about "free as in free beer" than "free as in freedom"). For me, customization is the deal-breaker. OS X is, for lack of a better term, very opinionated about how I should be using the system (GUI/mouse oriented interfaces for installing and updating things, fullscreen being a built-in windowing option but not maximization, etc.). As my tastes don't seem to coincide exactly with the choices that any one OS/distro makes, my only option to have exactly the setup I want is to use a fairly minimal distro and then configure it from the ground up with the choices I want. I have no trouble understanding that most people are perfectly fine with using a preconfigured system (OS X, Windows, Ubuntu, etc.), but it's just not for me.

jhoechtl• 10 years ago

Mac is overpriced and hyperbole. All the innovation happens in Linux these days. Except for overpaid fanboys which can brag around how cool they are, Macs make no sense from a developer perspective.

johndoe4589• 10 years ago

Are they? Are you kidding me? Putting all controversies aside, OS X is a much better finished product.

Which is also why the latest elementaryOS posts on Medium are kind of cringy. One moment the author says how Apple users are disatisfied that Apple may be abandoning powerful desktops, next moment he emphasizes how you can install Linux on any laptop.. starting with your Macbook. LOL? As if replacing the OS on the same hardware is going to solve the disatisfaction of a power user? And installing a much more broken, inconsistent collection of constantly broken packages? WHich you need to updated CONSTANTLY. If you don't like Windows updates, man, Linux is even worse. Every friggin day there are updates, they are all somehow VERY important, and they are all potential bombs that will fuck up your config or break some apps you installed. Fuck, I'm running a LTS version and I still get updtes everyday, probably for completely insignificant fixes.

I think I may end up installing Linux again on a partition because my Ubuntu VM is too sluggish for front end dev (especially CSS animations/transitions) but I would never expect that to be a better solution that straight up OS X.

bsaunder2• 10 years ago

I am such a developer. Just moved from an older MPB to a (soon-to-be) Linux (Ubuntu) laptop. Always preferred Linux as my primary OS, but liked Apple hardware and OSX when I didn't feel like fiddling with things. For me it was a complex calculation (in no particular order):

  -Increasing annoyance by subtle changes to various native mac apps.

  -Migration of OSX towards more of a Windows, hiding details from the user.

  -Wanting a machine with NVidia GTX 1070 to explore 3D and ML.

  -Apple's migration towards a fully soldered machine.

  -Removal of ports and DVD drive.

  -The Apple premium is too out of whack.

I settled for an Acer Predator 17": https://www.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/predator-model/NH.Q17A...

Essentially:

  -i7 CPU

  -NVidia GTX 1070 GPU

  -16B RAM (now 32GB, with $100 of RAM)

  -1TB HD

  -256GB SSD

  -1920x1080 display

  -CD/DVD burner

  -11 ports for stuff

It was on sale at MicroCenter for an unbeatable price.

The downsides:

  - its a beast (almost 10 pounds, and 18" - not sure it will fit under an airline seat, needed to buy a larger backpack).

  - its a "gamer" laptop... with all the tacky red lights and styling deemed necessary by marketing.

  - the display isn't as nice, but more than sufficient for my needs

I've booted from the Ubuntu Live disk and seems to get up and running with minimal issues, not sure how long the road is to get this fully functional with Linux. I strongly considered a System76 laptop, but was ultimately persuaded by the value of this hardware.

Ideally I'd like to just by a laptop with a preinstalled and supported hypervisor where I could trivially install any OS image I'd like (preferably in a way that would let me seamlessly run in either a cloud (AWS) or my local device). If I can slog though it, my ultimate plan is to get things running on here with a minimal arch linux as the hypervisor. Not looking forward to dealing with all the driver pain.

Fnoord10• 10 years ago

Agreed with most of the disadvantages.

Your processor is also quicker / more power efficient.

16 GB DDR4 will impact the battery life negatively, while 1920x1080 display will impact it positively. Both have their price.

The weight of your laptop is more than 2 times the weight of the 15" MBP 2015, approx 1,5 times the weight of a 15" MBP 2010, and roughly 2,5 times the weight of a 15" MBP 2016 (there is no 17" MBP anymore.)

DVD drive or burner I won't miss. I would've removed it from my old MBP 2010, but I am afraid it will cause instability. Its also a bit tricky to remove.

1 TB HDD is also IMO pointless. I just use networking if I need to access data. WiFi is quick enough.

A major advantage of your beast is the graphics card. If I'd find that important (I don't) I'd consider a eGPU.

Regarding bad battery life, if a device uses USB-C I can see power banks being useful in that regard.

Good luck, hope to read from you how it works out for you.

antihero3• 10 years ago

Used to develop full-time using Arch Linux with a tiling WM (i3), and the reasons I switched to using a MacBook when my company offered me one are:

  * The trackpad is awesome, it's well integrated with the OS and feels fantastic. I've yet to use a PC trackpad that isn't completely awful.  
  * Networking doesn't randomly break. This used to happen A LOT. The most stable solution I could find was just using wpa_supplicant and maintaining a load of config files, which was irritating and time consuming.  
  * There's a pretty unified well tested operating system that is designed for this piece of hardware. And it shows.  
  * The battery lasts for ages, even in this 2.5 year old laptop.  
  * The text rendering is pretty.  
  * The operating system is aesthetically pleasing and it's interface makes sense to me.

I'm up for giving Linux a gander again, but honestly I want something that's as bug free as possible and allows me to get on with coding instead of tinkering around fixing bullshit.

falcojr• 10 years ago

You'd probably have a lot better luck with Ubuntu or something that isn't rolling. Rolling and bleeding edge distros like Arch have a tendency to break more often when updating.

loup-vaillant6• 10 years ago

Using a "generic" laptop whose origin is not exactly easy to track (it bears the brand of the distributor, not of the maker). I installed ubuntu (LTS) with the proprietary (yuck) Wifi drivers. So far:

  * The trackpad works.  I use a mouse anyway.
  * Networking didn't randomly break so far.
  * Don't care about "unified".  Apart from a suspension bug, it works.
  * The battery lasts for 6-7 hours of programming.
  * Text rendering is pretty.
  * Xmonad + LXDE is pleasing and their interface make sense —to me at least.

It took a little tinkering around fixing bullshit. The lingering suspension bug prevents me to log back in if I close the lid when logged out. On the other hand I can stay the hell away from Apple and their shiny locked down empire.

idm2• 10 years ago

The fact we're still discussing the trackpad, suspend/wake, fonts, networking, and UI - in 2017 - means the problem still isn't solved on Linux. I gave a decade over to that quest (1996-2006) and then spent the next decade using MBPs. With a macbook pro, I have never once wondered about my trackpad, suspend/wake, fonts, networking, UI, or a host of other things like printers, scanners, USB, bluetooth, or external displays. That level of compatibility is a miracle, from the perspective of a daily Linux user.

I have used my laptop for heavy computation, software dev, academic work, major presentations, video and multimedia, casual browsing, gaming, etc, and it has NEVER given me trouble due to compatibility. Having spent way too much of my life thinking about those problems on Linux, you have no idea how liberating it is to be free of those concerns.

I get OCD about using a specific brand of disposable pen, so you'd better believe I think about the most important tool in my life: my laptop. The MBP is too good to accept any alternative. The 2016 was underwhelming, but it's still the best laptop/OS combination out there. It costs too much for the market and it's not enough-better to justify the upgrade, but dammit there's nothing that even compares.

I've been thinking hard about alternatives to the MBP during the past few months, and my decision is that I can't give all this up and still be a functioning academic and entrepreneur. I'll pay the $1000 premium and if I value my time at $25/hour, I'll recover that additional cost within 2 months compared to Linux maintenance. I wish it weren't so, but the maths don't lie.

antihero3• 10 years ago

Ah, forgot suspend/wake. I've literally never ever been able to get something remotely dependable with suspend/wake working with Linux. Like, it will work 90% of the time then you open it up and it just...wont.

nottorp5• 10 years ago

For some reason, Apple laptops are the only ones usable without a mouse. The trackpad simply sucks on anything else I've tried.

Just like people are used to OSes that crash all the time, they're used to unusable trackpads. Sad.

freehunter6• 10 years ago

honestly I want something that's as bug free as possible and allows me to get on with coding instead of tinkering around fixing bullshit

Arch is the very definition of "tinkering around". That's the appeal, that you can (and have to) customize it to what you want. Mint, Ubuntu, and Fedora are all "out of the box" experiences. The old Unix greybeards on the Internet hate them because they're one-size-fits-all, but that sounds like exactly what you're looking for.

juliangoldsmith• 10 years ago

Networking doesn't randomly break. This used to happen A LOT. The most stable solution I could find was just using wpa_supplicant and maintaining a load of config files, which was irritating and time consuming.

Did you try using NetworkManager instead of netctl? netctl can be a bit fiddly.

In any case, as an Arch user for a few years, I can definitely say that Arch is not for people who want something that Just Works. If you go back to Linux, you might want to look at Linux Mint, or even Ubuntu, if you aren't put off by Canonical.

GrinningFool5• 10 years ago

I know that I've tried wpa_supplicant directly, network manager, and a plethora of others... on anything that uses wifi (even when teh chip is 100% supported), it's always been hit or miss.

The frustrating thing is that nothing in the system tells you why. Networking suddenly just stops networking over wifi. No logs show that anything happened at all -- but it's not going to work again until you restart services (or in some cases, reboot).

This happens to me 2-3 times a week, usually at the most inconvenient times...

Nearly as much fun is using the nvidia driver. Every time I pull down kernel updates, I hope that my desktop will return... actualy this was a worry under noveau as well, so perhaps it's only made worse by nvidia.

With that said, I still like it better than my few years with Mac OS. It probably costs me ~2 hours a week in "crap I should not need to waste my time on", but I accept that tradeoff in order to have an environment that lets me work the way I prefer to work.

(Not to mention the bump in hardware performance, memory, and ssd size that I was able to get for the same $$)

grive• 10 years ago

Then you are probably not the target for the Arch distrib. Others are better suited for your needs.

You were using a distribution made for people who want to take time to tinker, then complain that it requires that you take time to tinker.

Using Arch is sometimes a status symbol, a way to signal that you are a hacker that likes to control every bit of your system. There is no need to try this hard. You can also simply use Ubuntu or any variants, or even Fedora for what's matters. That's what I do.

abalashov2• 10 years ago

I've been using Linux on the desktop since age 11, so about twenty years. I guess I missed the whole Apple excitement?

3131s• 10 years ago

Since age 17 for me, so about 11 years. I would use Linux even if I thought it were less capable than MacOS / Windows. I don't think that though -- Linux is awesome and somehow I have spent very little time dealing with the problems that others in this thread claim are so common.

abalashov2• 10 years ago

Yeah, I don't know, maybe I'm just lucky, but I haven't had to spend much time getting hardware to work in recent years. Certainly not on Ubuntu. It really does Just Work.

I run Arch nowadays and that is certainly not as turn-key as Ubuntu, but there's just too much "magic" in Ubuntu and I was tired of it. But Apple folks should like that sort of thing...

cxromos• 10 years ago

The only thing that makes me wonder is how this piece got 168 points (at the moment of writing this). I hope YC is not going to catch populism (mediocracy) that being a 'trend'.

SirJohnFalstaff• 10 years ago

I am surprised that nobody mentinoted poor quality of LLDB and especially its integration with Python for scripting.

Along with absence of tiling window manager these will be my only complaints when using Mac as development environment.

rswail• 10 years ago

Aside from the current Apple anti-fanboi'isms, I switched from Linux on desk/laptop to OSX two years ago. I had used Linux as my desktop and my laptop OS since around 1997 in various incarnations. Stuck with Fedora 12 for any number of years, primarily because of the fear that an upgrade would kill my desktop's flash, wifi, networking, X config etc etc. Yes I should have upgraded more often, but I had better things to do. My laptop was up to date with Fedora, but I still had to dick around to get it to work with external displays, current versions of flash/java (for browser crap I had to use), the stupidities of GNOME3 etc etc. I've been using computers since 1976, I'm sick of mucking around with them just to make something work when I'm trying to do work.

Around 2 years ago, I started developing for iOS/Android and had no choice in using a Mac desktop (Mini i7). At first I hated it, but then, everything just works. When it came time to upgrade my laptop, early last year, buying a Retina MBP was an easy decision.

As for upgrading it, I'll wait a generation, this round of upgrades was inhibited by Intel's lack of progress on Kaby Lake and Apple's fetish for changing connectors. By the time I upgrade (probably 2 years from now), USB-C/3.1G2/TB3 will be fairly ubiquitous. Docks will be available, good 5K monitors with USB-C to power the laptop.

The current crap about only getting 16GB and not being worth the money is just that. Don't buy one. Get a 2015 MBP if that floats your boat. It has effectively the same performance without the "limitation" of USB-C.

Have I dicked around with OSX? Yes, I run Karabiner, firefox, magicprefs etc. Reading these comments I found Alfred. But when I install these apps, they install, they work as advertised. Macports has everything I need to get a GNU like env, including latest versions of bash etc. It does it cleanly in /opt and doesn't screw around where Apple wants to lock things down (/usr etc).

My MBP sits on my desk closed attached to dual monitors that just work. When I take it on the road, it works when I plug it in to a projector at a meeting. It's a workhorse. I can muck around for fun on a linux VM or on AWS.

greenspot• 10 years ago

I code and I like huge, crisp screens. Minimum two or better three. One for the code, one for testing and one for API docs. If those monitors are hi-dpi, even better (or rather a must in 2016).

With the new MBP 15 I can drive...

2x 5k 27" screen + the internal one.

No other notebook can do this. Most struggle already with 2x 4K monitors.

franciscop• 10 years ago

I was considering buying a MacBook Air few years back to install Linux. However, I decided in the end to go for the Zenbook Prime at the time for slightly better characteristics in all departments EXCEPT in battery life. It was a great decision. Now I'm on the Asus UX305CA which is great in all departments including battery life EXCEPT it doesn't have a backlit keyboard. It is like every time Asus fixes a thing they screw a new thing.

Now that Apple is catching up, unless Asus/others release a good ultrabook by the end of this year my next computer might just be a Mac. The future is going to be made of USB Type-C so I want my next computer to bet heavy on those, including charging.

ciconia• 10 years ago

I think in the current climate choosing macOS over other alternatives has become a much less alluring option. On the contrary, in many ways the choice of OS has become a much less of a big of a deal than it was. Many development platforms and frameworks today have a good cross-OS story (notable exception: Apple's developer tools). In that respect OS's have become much more of a commodity product. As long as they can host your developer tools and frameworks, they can do the job.

Even Windows today offers a pretty good experience for developers, and it's remarkable that Microsoft is actually working hard to make Windows a good alternative to MacOS and Linux.

diimdeep• 10 years ago

Alan Kay: 'People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.' This is why no one not even close to macOS and Macbook synergy.

konart3• 10 years ago

Might as well right why they are switching from Linux to OS X, Windows or something else.

I've been using Ubuntu up until 10.10 (if I'm not mistaken) and then Arch (for about 4 years). In the last two years I've gone from Android+Linux to full Apple.

The reasons were:

1) At the time there was no notebook that could compare with MBPr (late 2013 in my case). Yes, you could have find some with the same hardware and even same size\weight, but I haven't hold a single one of them that wouldn't creak. Macbooks are build to be with you all them time. Other companies build them to be compact alternative to your desktop. From what I've seen - nothing really changed since then.

2) Free\opensouce\etc shit. Don't get me wrong - free is good, opensource is awesome, freedom is what all people need. But not the price it comes to your sometimes. Sometime free can be more expensive, opensource can be more binding. One of the reasons to live linux was the number of forks of all the libs and utils in the system. Every now and then some team splits or somebody decides his new chrome and shiny fork is something people need and voila! you have a zoo of this shit. Because the very next day some projects will split because they can't come to agreement about what lib to be using now.

This is not a bliss, this is madness. When it comes to my user experience - I don't care what lib does mpv uses and can use, or... whatever. I only care if it does the job as well as before and I don't what all of the said forks in my system, this is a mess.

3) As soon as I got my MBPr I realised I want to try the so called BIG A ECOSYSTEM and bought an iPhone 6 on my birthday (my bd was on the same day the phone came to my country).

I was amazed by the level of comfort. Everything works out of the box, the god damn design is always consistent[1], no need to dive into python (or something else) to seamlessly use your phone with your computer. Yes, this comes at a price - without jailbreaking you are tied to your apps, services etc. You can't just upload your music to your phone via usb and some other things, but there are solutions. ONE TIME SOLUTIONS, LINUX!, not one week prior the next update ones.

oliwarner3• 10 years ago

I'm a little bit bemused by your description in #2 as the open source ecosystem as a zoo.

It is what you make of it. If you pick brand new shiny things from unproven teams at war with their sourcecode's origin community, you're going to see some churn. You moved from the relative stability of Ubuntu to the constant churn of Arch, which suggests you've missed the point of cadence distributions. Newer is often not automagically better.

We've been using and developing with and deploying on Ubuntu for years now. It's not the zoo you describe — though you are free to make it one with poor choices.

konart3• 10 years ago

Well, I was prepared to see something like this, unfortunatelly I didn't really had time or desire to write a more detailed response.

No, that's not what I made of it, but them

I went from Ubuntu to Arch becase they desided they are now the coolers kids in the town and started to introduce shit like Unity and other things. Be the time 10.10 came out - I had to rebuild 1/3 of the system to make it as nice (in my opinion) as it should be and as it was up until they decided to fuck it up (again - just my opinion).

Anyway - Arch was the best thing I could find among all other distros. Modular approach, KISS, very easy to install and maintain.

The problem (both with Ubuntu and Arch, mind you) comes not with what you described as "new shiny things from unproven teams" or "Newer is often not automagically better.".

Here is an example for you. At some point Jim was using program A for audio editing and program B for video editing. A used some libA library and B uses libraries libA and libB (among many others). At some point something happened inside the team of libA and now we have libAa and libAb. They have some differences (obviously). Now the teams of A and B have to decided what library to use. Fighting among them leads to new arguments about functionality and other this and two new forks appear.

So now we have programs Aa, Ab, Ba and Bb. Now Jim, as a use of their previous versions had to chose what to use from this moment onwards and sometimes, it happens so that he needs all the functionality that B had, but not it is torn between Ba and Bb. So by the end of the day he has two forks of B installed, one fork of A, two libraries that do the same thing and he is praying nothings starts to get in conflict with the others.

And this happens all the time.

We've been using and developing with and deploying on Ubuntu for years now.

This makes it sound like you are talking about something that works as a server for services or software you deploy. I'm talking about using linux at home as working\media machine, not as a server. The latter has no such problems (not to this extent at least)

shams93• 10 years ago

I see more young developers on Chromebooks and that's not because they hate Apple it's because the la tech marketplace hates to pay them enough to afford a MacBook pro

phreack• 10 years ago

I would love switching away from the royal pain that is OSX and the increasingly worse MacBooks, but alas, I work in iOS development and making a hackintosh is too much of a gray area and fragile. I hate that lock in.

davout• 10 years ago

Try "brew install valgrind", you'll understand.

k0dede• 10 years ago

Typical Hacker news BullSHIT. Start with a 'WHY', lets make a discussion about nonsense

Zigurd• 10 years ago

I recently switched in the opposite direction because I have a greater need of using Xcode than I have of compiling Android. I'll probably install and configure Ubuntu from scratch now that I don't have continuing need of stable toolchains on it. But, for now, I'm liking MacOS better.

st3v3r3• 10 years ago

Isn't the new MBP one of the best selling laptops of recent? And I'm honestly not seeing anything in the little blurb of an article that states concretely that this is happening in significant numbers.

rumcajz• 10 years ago

Somehow tangential, but OSX is pain to develop for. I am running Linux on my laptop. If I want to test my project on OSX I would have to buy an Apple box. So, in the end, I am left with Travis CI, which I am using in 60's way, like a timesharing system (change code, submit, wait till it compiles, check errors, iterate). All in all, it not much better than targetting Windows.

rbanffy• 10 years ago

People worry too much about the flavor of Unix they are using.

I didn't switch - I have - and use - both Linux (a Dell laptop, an Acer "netbook", a Lenovo "server") and macOS (an rMBP, a Mini) and, quite frankly, there is no real difference. The rMBP is an awesome laptop - light, fast, great screen, but the Dell feels faster and the Acer is lighter (and much, much cheaper). The trackpad on the Acer and Dell annoy me. I don't trust HFS (been bitten by silent corruption more than once)

Like I said before, people worry way too much about the program they use to run their terminals and text editors. If it has a Unix-like environment, even Windows (I prefer Cygwin) works.

markplindsay• 10 years ago

I am ready to do this whenever a viable alternative for Sketch becomes available for Linux.

I already run a Ubuntu VM full-time for development. Only using VirtualBox for Microsoft's IE VMs would be great. I suppose I could also run Illustrator in Windows, but 2 out of 3 of the designers I work with regularly have embraced Sketch, so I might be out of luck with that plan anyway.

a_lifters_life• 10 years ago

I used to be a complete apple fan boy...until my $2,500 MacBook pro completely bit the dust (less than 4 years old). Instead, I built a $500 Ubuntu rig(desktop), and bought a $200 chromebook and put Ubuntu on it. Needless to say, a month or two ago this happened, and I'll NEVER spend $xxxx again on a MacBook again.

beagle3• 10 years ago

I'm trying to move from Linux to OS X (after using Linux exclusively for the last 12 years, win/lin before that), and I keep hitting things which feel wrong, like dropping .DS_store files on every directory visited, the 30-minute please-wait-while-we-upgrade-your-kernel which seems to happen more often than once a month.

And I have not yet since anything that wowwed me. Linux for me "just works" and has done so for a decade. Am I missing something? Is there are a MacOS secret tweak utility that would get rid of these annoyances? asepsis stopped working on Sierra.

Why are developers switching from Mac OS X to Linux?

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