More Devs Now Use OS X Than Linux, Says Survey (9to5mac.com) 532
An anonymous reader writes from an article on 9to5Mac: Stack Overflow reports that more developers now use OS X than Linux as their primary OS, and that if the trend continues, fewer than half of all developers will be using Windows next year. The site says it carried out "the most comprehensive developer survey ever conducted," with more than 56,000 coders across 173 countries taking part.
The survey also mentioned more were still developing for Android than iOS -- 61.9% versus 47.5%. However, almost a third of developers are using Swift, which was also the second most loved language after Rust.
The survey also mentioned more were still developing for Android than iOS -- 61.9% versus 47.5%. However, almost a third of developers are using Swift, which was also the second most loved language after Rust.
in an attempt to explain this to others.... (Score:2, Interesting)
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i said, Windows is equivalent to the incandescent light bulb. Linux approximates the CFL, and OS X could be the LED.
Or people using Apple products are just full of themselves and think they can program.
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or, OSX is the most useful implementation of Unix anywhere and at any time in history, from a users point of view.
As a developer I was raised on SunOS (before it became Solaris). Unix is in my genes. However, both as a developer and outside of work, I use computers for other things than 'vi' and 'make', or 'emacs' and 'ant' or whatever silly thing you could think of. I use it for my images, for editing 4K video from my camera etc. Since Linux on the Desktop is never going to happen, and actual usable applic
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You'd have to be a real masochist today to chose a Linux desktop over an OSX desktop for a Unix development experience.
Never understood the OSX superiority complex. It's almost like you guys are overcompensating for something.
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For the record, I have used Linux since 1993. I also used Minix back then on my home-grown BBS (you wouldn't know, you are too young). I had a short brush with Macs when I went to business school, but didn't own an OSX machine until I got a Macbook Pro a couple of years back. My personal web stuff is all on Linux on AWS. I am not an Apple fan boi by any stretch of the imagination.
So, what makes OSX infinitely more usable than Linux? Two things, usability and apps. There are no usable apps for regular stuff
Re:in an attempt to explain this to others.... (Score:4, Interesting)
For the record, I have used Linux since 1993. I also used Minix back then on my home-grown BBS (you wouldn't know, you are too young).
I know what you mean, going beyond tuning a solaris kernel with MAXUSERS or ATT unix, Interactive, coding C with vi on a hp700/44 serial terminal. Pretty much everything is a step up from that.
I had a short brush with Macs when I went to business school, but didn't own an OSX machine until I got a Macbook Pro a couple of years back. My personal web stuff is all on Linux on AWS. I am not an Apple fan boi by any stretch of the imagination.
I beleive you. I always though that 68000 mac hardware was better than PCs. Apple made less hardware back then, but they used the same stuff that was on the servers so it was rock solid. I loved it.
So, what makes OSX infinitely more usable than Linux? Two things, usability and apps. There are no usable apps for regular stuff for Linux. Seriously. Show me an alternative to Photoshop, for example.
I can't show you an alternative to Photoshop, except GIMP, but I haven't used it for a production so I can't speak to usability, I'm told it's very powerful. What I can speak to is Audio production in Linux is hands down where the innovation is occurring. Sure, Mac maybe more usable, but that's a poweruser issue, not an innovation issue. My observations about many Apple applications is that they let you get to a level of good productivity real fast with a fantastic user experience at the expense of sheilding you from the power of the machine and making innovation less accessible. Sure that lets you be creative, but nothing out of the ordinary.
The usability paradigm in Linux attracts a different type of user. When I commit to an application I want to own the space and not be limited by the type of commercial imperatives that can alter my investment in learning, in that regard open source software is superior because sometimes the users also contribute to the code base. Obviously this does not exclude them from being a MAC user, that is the power of open source though.
I think people are too scared to explore because of what the constantly changing Windows environment did to them. Apples brilliance was taking people out of that paradigm, who can fault that move. However Apple also missed out on the significant advances in the Power PC CPU architecture, as IBM received a massive cash inflow of development from Microsoft *and* Sony, so they weren't that smart moving to intel. I'm certain Intel would have been aware of their strategic position though, when making that deal.
I'm curious about what languages you are developing in though, do you mind sharing?
The sad reality is not that OSX folks have a superiority complex, they quite possibly do, the sad thing is that when you point out that OSX beats Linux on everything, Linux users are sooo insecure they have to lash out. Get over your self, get rid of Linux (on your desktop) and be happier.
Wow, I would have said it was the other way around, I am just so damn comfortable in Linux that the UI is almost irrelevant. I have all the platforms in the house, including a powerbook for my wife. I thought that since Apple didn't have to pay for the use of an excellent O.S platform they could focus their effort on the UI - they did great job too, however I'm just not fond of how that UI context works, it's same reason I dumped Unity. Mac is more usable, but I feel limited, like the power of the machine is abstracted away from me. You're probably right but does my preference count? I don't care what others use, however is it ok for me to use Linux because I actually like the way it works and I'm happy with it? I am stupid for not using a MAC to code?
Please don't take offence, I'm not criticizing devs who use Macs either, I'm actually interested what I can learn about if there are things better than what I do. I'm not convinced that it is a
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2016 will be the year of Linux off the desktop! Woot!
But seriously, I switched to Mac for the same reason as you. I was sick of using crappy open source software for doing simple things in complicated ways. I gladly paid a few euros for some programs that were much much better than their open source equivalent.
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I don't think it's inherently superior but it is more user friendly.
I make my living creating stuff using computers as a tool. I don't need to spend time making the tool work. Therefore the tool being more user friendly means that inherently is superior. Now, if writing code was all I did, the difference between Linux and OSX would be much smaller, but that isn't the case. I edit 4K video from my Panasonic camera for example, which is not something I can do on Linux. I import my photos into Lightroom and adjust them in Capture One, some times I edit in Photosop. This simple
Re:in an attempt to explain this to others.... (Score:4, Informative)
I really don't know what people mean when they say that OSX is more user friendly.
You should consider that a limitation of you ability to understand. Seriously.
this is much much less efficient and therefore less user friendly
And this is where your misunderstanding comes from. Here's a clue. User friendly: Allows me to easily digest the XAVC 4K footage from my camera, do basic color correction, cut away the junk, create a presentable end result. That's user friendly. Having multiple options for window managers, being exceedingly configurable to the point of me being able to make it fit my life perfectly when developing Java software - user-unfriendly for 99.999992% of the worlds population.
If you find more UI elements too distracting to do your work then it is pills you need, not a streamlined OS
I don't sit around masturbating to my own UI configuration every day. I do work that pays. For me to accomplish this I need to run applications that work. I design and develop software, which includes GUI components that are special made so I need a good vector graphics tool to assist in this. Also, I take pictures and make movies in my spare time, and I also use some of those skills when I develop GUI elements for my applications. In order to do that I need applications. A user friendly OS has those applications. Linux does not, and probably never will.
How do you get by without applications?
Re: in an attempt to explain this to others.... (Score:4, Interesting)
I've had my Linux Mint box freeze sporadically. I thought it was the OS for the longest time but it happened a couple weeks after I did a clean wipe and reinstall.
Turned out it was a bad stick of memory. Replaced it and things have been golden.
Did the GP run a low level memory test lately?
Re:in an attempt to explain this to others.... (Score:5, Funny)
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Give them time. You remember how long it took to accept a second button on the mouse, don't you?
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I understand the rational (also someone mentioned more efficient use of screen space as multiple windows share a single menu strip instead of repeating a usually identical menu in each window).
However, his statement was that he preferred the travel distance of the in-window menu strategy. You can't really respond to a preference with "you are wrong because of some design 'law' says you should like the other way".
Anytime someone calls 'law' in the highly subjective world of UI design, it frustrates me a tad
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What is the counterpart on OSX?
Command-Space.
The command key is the one with either the "fan" on it and/or the letters 'cmd' on it or if you have an old mac: the Apple key.
And yes, that feature M$ copied from Mac OS X.
When I use OSX I have to first activate that window before I can do anything with the menu and then I must mouse to the menu.
You want to tell us you want to issue a "random" menu command in a "random" window on OS X. But yu never do that on Windows?
Wow. What is the difference in clicking on
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OSX is basically a nice mix between Unix to make developers happy and enterprise software (ie, you can run Office which is almost mandatory for most corporations). Linux is nice too but it lacks a lot of stuff that the enterprise wants, or the developer who doesn't want to waste time micromanaging it.
The Mac Book Pro, though expensive, is very nice to use. Probably some Apple patents around which is why other PC laptops have really clumsy touch pads.
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I've been accused of Apple fanboi-isms and I'm not sure if I in even my "best" (or "worst", depends on where you stand) Apple fanboi days would be as condescending as you.
I'm taking a programming course at the local university to update my skills. In this class we are to program a "robot" (it has motors and sensors but it's not much more than an RC toy) to do various tasks. We were offered use of the university computers, but those I cannot take home to work on, or bring our own. The instructor gave inst
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i said, Windows is equivalent to the incandescent light bulb. Linux approximates the CFL, and OS X could be the LED.
Or people using Apple products are just full of themselves and think they can program.
I have nearly 4 decades of embedded developer experience, and the vast majority of that has been using Apple products.
And why? Because with one computer, I could have my Dev. Tools, plus an entire Desktop Publishing chain for Documentation, and real MS Office for participating in the rest of the "business" stuff.
And that was even back in the early 90s. Now the Mac is a even a more obvious choice for most Development work.
Re:in an attempt to explain this to others.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:in an attempt to explain this to others.... (Score:4, Informative)
I'm a developer. I own a Macbook. It's got a nice box. It brings up a bash shell. I can ssh. I don't need to install linux on it to be doing the same things the same way I would be doing on Linux if I wasn't already logged into a Linux box over the network.
Re:in an attempt to explain this to others.... (Score:5, Interesting)
The summery says OS X which is for desktops and laptops IIRC. iOS is for iShiny.
The summary also says that it is developers that were surveyed. These are people who do not have to use the operating system for which they are developing. So... iOS is the reason that they use OS X.
Re:in an attempt to explain this to others.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:in an attempt to explain this to others.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that the summary also says that more people develop for Android than for iOS.
Developing for Android does not mean that you don't use OS X. In fact, if you want to target both iOS and Android then the best solution is a Mac. Yes, you can't write for iOS on other platforms, but that will be a small minority.
Re:in an attempt to explain this to others.... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you develop for iOS then you will almost certainly (or must?) be using OSX to do so...
If you develop for Android you have a choice of platforms.
If you develop for both you might as well run OSX because the android tools run just as well on there, plus if you're employed as a developer you can justify an expensive mac over whatever bottom of the barrel junk you'd have got otherwise.
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...there was nothing else in this sector (vaio does not count, fuck vaio).
You're right. There is nothing else in this sector as long as you ignore the others that are in the sector (like Sony, Samsung, Toshiba, ...)
Re: in an attempt to explain this to others.... (Score:3)
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Wasn't MacOS supposed to have been "the desktop Unix" 10 or 15 years ago. Wasn't this supposed to have happened already rather than it just happening now?
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Wasn't MacOS supposed to have been "the desktop Unix" 10 or 15 years ago. Wasn't this supposed to have happened already rather than it just happening now?
OS X (not MacOS) IS "The Destop Unix", and has been so since 2000. That's SIXTEEN YEARS.
Welcome to the party; sorry your invitation got lost in the mail...
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It's not like the OS-X tools are oh so much better than anyone else's.
People find it weird that I write in vim and run under XCode. I would rather debug C++ with XCode than with literally anything that's currently available on Linux.
(Yes, I do date back to the era of dbx and gdb. I still can if I must.)
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No one's really come out with a debugger better than gdb. Everything else tends towards IDEs and cumbersome point and click and rarely any scripting capabilities. Sure gdb is far from perfect but the competition is even further away.
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Hahahaha!
Oh, wait, you were serious?
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Ah, I see the problem. You think photo software is software development.
Re: in an attempt to explain this to others.... (Score:3)
I never pay retail. The 2015 13" MBP is available on eBay for right around $975...and normally retails for $1400. I only buy from shops with a 30 day money back guarantee. Haven't had a problem yet and I've bought 4 for my employees in the last year. They're gently used (scratches on bottom for instance) but who cares?
Re: in an attempt to explain this to others.... (Score:5, Funny)
Where I work, everyone is expected to wear pants.
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Basically it's Unix while at the same time keeping the corporate people in IT happy. People get nervous around Linux, and many devs with long term experience prefer Unix over the lock-in from Microsoft.
real UNIX with full corporate support in the enter (Score:4, Informative)
OS X is the UNIX that large organizations support their employees using. And btw it's nothing like iOS.
I used Linux exclusively for about 12 years. I'm even named in the Linux kernel changelog, so you could say I've long been a fan of Linux. When sold my business and took a 9-5 job with a big organization, I was offered a choice - Windows or OS X. The corporate helpdesk, the active directory services, etc didn't do Linux. Knowing that OS X is UNIX (certified UNIX, POSIX, single UNIX), I chose OS X over Windows.
I don't buy Apple's mobile devices, and didn't much care for the iPad my boss handed me, but that's iOS. Time for me to try OS X.
I was surprised to find that for day-to-day use, OS X is almost exactly like Linux, on a quality machine, with few to no annoyances. It just works. I can download and compile all my favorite FOSS software the same way I always have - ./configure; make; make install. It's just like a well-polished Linux distribution, and it integrates seamlessly with the corporate network.
System administration is a little different, but I haven't needed to do much system administration on my Macs, they just work.
If you like Linux or BSD and you're in an organization that includes Windows desktops, Active Directory, etc, a Mac is a very good fit. Don't let any negative experience with iOS fool you, OS X on a Mac Pro is a powerful UNIX system, and the hardware is well made. (The hardware isn't anything magical, but it's well designed, solid construction, and good performance) .
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I remember seeing a business that would re-sell Apple computers but not call them such on the order form, just so people could get around a "no Apple" policy at big corporations. You seem to have a similar problem where Linux computers are not supported but your post reminded me of that company.
I don't recall their name and I don't know if they are still in business but it must have been a good business to be in since they seemed to stick around for a few years at least. They offered two kinds of Apple's,
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I use a Macbook at work and a Dell with Antergos at home. My linux laptop has less problems working. Bluetooth has never worked and wifi drops constantly on the Mac to the point that I'm having to have the whole thing replaced, because changing the wifi card apparently voids the warranty unless you're a "Genius". The OS is okay but I pretty much only use it for Web browsing and the terminal, the two major portions of my job. The only OS I can't do my job fully with without a lot of add-ons? Windows.
Honestly
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I'd like to say that I'll try another Mac when it comes time to replace the Retina, but honestly I'll just hold out for Adobe
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It's not a matter of cheap, it's a matter that I can build a machine for a lot less than Apple would charge me, and run Linux or Windows on it, and run all the development tools I need. So even if my wallet was bursting, why would I buy a Mac?
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I can build a machine for a lot less than Apple would charge me, [...]
I can pretty much guarantee that any machine you build won't have as high a power-to-weight ratio as a MacBook. When someone else is paying for it, and you travel/commute a lot, it's often worth it.
Unless you need something that a Mac won't give you, of course, like a decent GPU...
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...decent GPU, better CPU, more storage, civilized set of ports.
Apple products only cater to a very small set of use cases whereas PCs accommodate any of those plus plenty of other options. Current Apple products aren't at all interesting beyond the novelty form factors. So the idea that you can't get a similarly equipped PC is "cute".
The single biggest problem with using a Mac is the (limited) hardware.
It's really a shame that using MacOS in a VM isn't simpler.
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If you can build (and I emphasise "build") a machine which is as light and as powerful as a MacBook Air, please submit it to hackaday.
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For me personally I got tired of fighting with Windows trying to get things working. When things go wrong I found it very difficult to get information on what was going wrong. Plus I had to change the way I worked to fit Windows, not have the tool adapt to me. For Linux I was tired of building everything. It's been a while since I've used Linux so I'm sure it's changed. However with the whole systemd thing going on I'm glad I'm out of there. For the most part I'm happy running my Mac and developing on it.
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How long has it been since you used a linux distro? I've been able to do all of what you describe for at least the last 5 years perfectly seamlessly. Certainly more seamlessly than windows manages it.
As for breaking your wireless card? WTF? You talk about buying decent hardware but you must have bought the most random chipset to have had that problem in the last decade. Recognising your monitor and using lynx? I don't think I could even drive lynx if I needed to..... and I've been running linux as my p
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Developers, developers, developers (Score:3, Insightful)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Slowly control is wrested from the beast.
Computers are tools, I use the best one for the job. OSX is best for most development tasks. x86 is still cheap power.
The masses are going to use tablets from now on, and that ship has sailed for MS.
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for some definition of "developer" (Score:5, Interesting)
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Ummmm, no you have it wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
The GP didn't say they weren't developers, just that they didn't do a good job representing developers as a whole. The claims is that more developers develop on something, the GP points out that it is really more of a particular subset. His opinion is also that the subset in question isn't likely very good.
It's not a "No true Scotsman," fallacy to say that a subgroup isn't representative of the whole group. For example if you said "All Scottish people are drunks, I mean just look at all of them in this bar," it would not be a fallacy for someone to say "You are in a bar, the people here do not represent all the people in Scotland, this is a small subgroup."
Further, something like a developer isn't just an arbitrary label. You aren't a developer just because you say you are any more than you are astronaut or a plumber or the like. Someone that fucks around with a tiny bit of JS coding a bit in their free time isn't a developer, just like someone who once changed the drain trap on their sink is a plumber. When you talk about professions, there is the idea that you do it, well, professionally.
Re: for some definition of "developer" (Score:2, Insightful)
Let the hate flow through you...
But seriously. I'm not surprised by this at all. Around 75% of the devs I know use macs, from long time Microsoft folk to embedded systems guys. It has fuckall to do with how serious a coder you are and a lot more to do with the fact that OSX is BSD with a pretty face.
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Counter anecdote: most of the developers I know use Windows. Windows is the most popular platform and most software is vertical applications running on it. Visual Studio with .NET is great for developing applications, and for cloud Azure is pretty much the easiest and best integrated environment. On the embedded site most of the tools supplied by manufacturers only run on Windows (some support Linux and even Mac OS, but most don't).
The GP is probably right, it's all the web developers who hang out on Stack
Re: for some definition of "developer" (Score:4, Insightful)
OSX is BSD with a pretty face.
With drivers that actually work, for everything. If I billed myself my normal hourly rate for what it's taken to get linux drivers working for a lot of my machines I'm at the cost of a Mac anyway.
Re:for some definition of "developer" (Score:4, Interesting)
Odd web developer preferences (Score:2)
If the survey is skewed towards web developers, why then are Rust and Swift the most popular languages?
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Pray tell, what needs to real programmers have, that an OSX machine cannot possibly provide?
And we all know that real programmers don't need any OS at all. Seymour Cray could toggle a program from the front panel. He didn't need no tabbed Gnome file browser, or any other piece of Linux software that did a half-assed attempt at imitating Windows or OSX.
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How much of this self-selection is dependent on browsing habits? Are you ever going to get approached to take this survey if you browse the web in paranoid mode? Is this selection methodology going to bias against the paranoid? How would that kind of bias alter the results?
It would expect it to favor MacOS and disfavor both Windows and Linux.
I wonder how many would stay.. (Score:2)
If you could write IOS applications in other platforms like linux or windows.
duh (Score:5, Informative)
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Yep. If it was still like MacOS classic, then I wouldn't like Macs.
Re:duh (Score:5, Informative)
Hilarious post.
SystemStarter came from Next (afaik--or at least the crazy earliest versions of OS X) and has been deprecated for something like 12 years (it was started by init, btw). The current initial/cron/systemd type daemon is launchd. Did I mention that launchd is open source and has been ported to FreeBSD? I dont know a ton about systemd, but it seems similar—if more expansive—than launchd.
If you don't like the BSD-style utilities, you can always install gnu versions. See brew, macports, etc.
Darwin is open source.
Re:duh (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a developer. I do not want to be the sysadmin for my own machine. It wastes too much of my time. Now granted I do have to do it from time to time on my Mac at work, but it's far simpler than trying to deal with fixing problems in Linux. I used to be a Unix sysadmin, later I used Linux a lot, but these days Linux is just too complicated. Even worse if you have xubuntu or kubuntu so that all of the web searches only give you solutions that work for ubuntu.
And you can get Mac Ports to put other tools on the Mac easily.
If you're forced to have an enterprise machine by the corporate ideology, would you want Windows with a slow and clumsy Cygwin or a native Unix that can run native tools? No, the enterprise people probably won't let you have Linux unless it's a second machine.
because you can still run linux (Score:5, Informative)
mac hardware lets you run all three major OS's (osx + windows + linux) on a single piece of hardware.
also — you get all the commandline UNIX-y goodness + the ability to run Microsoft Word + the ability to run Adobe Photoshop right beside your terminal window.
and it never stops running for some arcane reason after a pkg update.
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One thing that I really like about Mac OS (though I don't know if the other ones support now since it's been a while since I've had to use them) is that you can move files around and the applications still are able to find them.
For example say I get some new MP3s. I don't want them in my Library folder yet since I don't know if I want to keep them so I have a folder that isn't backed up where I shove temporary stuff. I'll put the files there and import them into iTunes. When in iTunes I'll listen to the
Re: because you can still run linux (Score:5, Insightful)
And on a mac laptop, sleep and hibernate and resume always work.
Re:because you can still run linux (Score:5, Interesting)
and it never stops running for some arcane reason after a pkg update.
No, just wireless, or CIFS, or some other subsystem breaks or performance goes to shit. I was amazed at how many issues the 15 OSX users at my last company managed to encounter (I was the datacenter manager but I got pulled in as senior troubleshooter since we were only a 40 person IT shop). I'm now at a global 5,000 person firm and we have hundreds of OSX users and they definitely create more than their share of tickets, not sure if that's a result of the OS or the userbase but frankly it doesn't matter to me as it still results in more work for me per supported user. I think OSX is an OK OS and have taken on a Macbook Air as my work laptop, partly because it's light and partly to make myself more familiar with OSX so I can better support my users, but people who think OSX is some magical panacea are delusional, it's still a complex OS written by human programmers so it's still going to have its share of bugs.
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mac hardware lets you run all three major OS's (osx + windows + linux) on a single piece of hardware.
I think you meant to say:
OS X tries to prevent you from running all the major OSes on anything but Mac hardware
You can do it on any x86 hardware, you just have to hack around DSMOS, which serves literally no purpose other than to prevent OS X from running on anything but a Mac.
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I'm actually wondering, why doesn't Linux run Android apps like native yet? It shouldn't be all that hard to do, just port the Java layer, and shim the low-level APIs where needed. I mean, if BSD can run Linux apps...
And then Linux would have Word, too. A trimmed-down version of it, but one that is sufficient for 90% of the users out there, and it wouldn't screw your formatting etc for people who use full-fledged Word.
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Re:because you can still run linux (Score:4, Insightful)
Windows is... unsuitable for hardcore development.
Honestly, this entire thread has mostly devolved into holy war rhetoric. Any three of the major desktop OSes work just fine for development work. Some are better at specific development tasks than others, largely depending on what type of software you're writing.
Deploying software to Linux-based servers or prefer using traditional OSS tools? Yeah, naturally Linux is probably the way to go, with OS X as a reasonable alternative. iOS development - OS X is nearly a requirement unless you're doing Xamarin or another x-platfrom system - although Windows is now rolling out pretty decent alternative-OS dev support for iOS and Android now too. Native client-side development, or perhaps a C# project? Yeah, you might want to use Visual Studio and Windows. Web development - yeah, probably doesn't matter quite as much... just depends on where your preferred tools are. Game developer? There's not even a question: you're going to be using Windows as your primary development platform.
When people try to tell me that a particular OS isn't a suitable development platform, I have to roll my eyes a bit (sorry), because obviously they mean "for the specific type of work I do", and they may not even realize it.
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"Why anybody would pay extra for Apple hardware to run OSX is a mystery."
I remember a conversation with some co-workers after a very public announcement of the latest Apple laptop. They were scoffing at it's lack of I/O ports, small screen, high price, or whatever. So I began to ask them some questions, such as how many computers they own, how often they actually use the ports they claim they need, how often they actually carry their laptop from their home. I was able to show them that they simply were n
Why is this news? (Score:3)
Personally, I develop the full application stack and I use OSX for iOS and Linux for everything else. I'm not really sure why Linux feels more efficient, maybe because I grew up with windows.
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One of those infidels... (Score:2)
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And I fucking hate this (Score:2)
I work in a company that develops software that ONLY runs on Linux. Why the fuck do we use OSX for our dev platform? It makes no fucking sense at all.
That bulk discount (Score:2, Troll)
I was surprised by how much of a discount Apple gives for bulk to companies. All manufacturers have discounts, but Apple is kind of notorious for being conservative on that front...
Then I asked a friend who's at the head of a company of a few hundred employees that all use Macbook Pros how much they were paying for them. It wasn't a "little" cheaper. It was drastic (obviously Apple has higher margins, so they can mark them down more...i just never knew they actually did).
Like, marked down enough to be in li
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Move along, nothing to see here... (Score:3)
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I think that instead of people wondering why the hell someone would want OSX they should instead ask what Windows has that would make a developer want to stay.
Duh MacOSX/IOS compatibility (Score:3)
If you need to test a website or write a mobile app only a Mac is allowed by VMware to run all the platforms. So get a Mac and virtualize all. Get Windows or Linux and you miss out on IOS and MacOSX.
This will probably be the nail for Visual Studio until someone or MS sues. Remember the patch for VMWare Fusion/ Workstation where they forget to turn off the chock_nonApple()? They quickly patched that
so much... (Score:2)
Multi-frigging-monitors (Score:3, Informative)
If you are making money on your development skills, having dual 30 inch displays helps to boost your productivity a bit permanently while only requiring a small investment from you or your employer every several years. OSX supports these setups perfectly by letting you configure arrangement of the monitors and their exact physical layout on the desk, and has a menu bar and dock on every screen, plus multiple monitors can be connected through a single Thunderbolt cable. Windows and Linux don't. If you want power user / developer mindshare this is a must.
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This Explains the shoddy software being released (Score:2, Insightful)
So this is the reason why software has become less intuitive less user friendly and less functional.
Because developers have crippled them selves with the same broken base that is mac osx.
where the design mantra is "why do you need that?"
and thus all the software that trickles out form these devs reinforce the ideology of why do you need that? do it this way instead.
and if that way dont work for you will tough apple turtle shell pie for you baby, because it only this way or be abandoned and find your on
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OSX may be broken, but it can still limp along when Windows is twitching in a ditch and being left behind. Seriously, worst UIs in the world all come from Microsoft. People were using Unix to develop before Gates wrote his first BASIC.
Say What Now? (Score:4, Interesting)
Stack Overflow reports that more developers now use OS X than Linux as their primary OS, and that if the trend continues, fewer than half of all developers will be using Windows next year.
Someone care to enlighten me on the logic here? Where does Windows usage become involved in the OS X vs Linux equation. Or, if they're trying to say people are jumping ship from Win to OS X, why mention Linux at all? Either way, there's one too many OS's mentioned in TFS. Didn't read TFA, because TFS does not compute.
Please. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
56K is actually a good size for the survey. The rule of thumb is that if you want to compute relatively accurate statistics from a population of size N, then you should sample a representative subset of N**0.5. The only caveat is that the sampling method should try to avoid biasing.
At 56 million coders that's about N = 2**26, N**0.5 = 2**13 = 8192. So a survey size of 56K is about 7 times overkill, but it doesn't hurt to have more than necessary.
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The rule of thumb is you can beat your wife as long as the stick you use is no bigger than your thumb.
While plenty of commentators have denounced such a rule (including at least two 19th century American judges), it does not appear [wikipedia.org] the rule itself has ever actually existed. [straightdope.com]
This "regulated spousal abuse" is found nowhere in English (and thus also American) common law. Using any kind of switch, thumb-width or otherwise, to "correct" one's wife has been illegal in the US since at least the Colonial era.
Not to say abuse didn't occur, but there was no rule on the books about it being OK as long as it was
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Another person that failed statistics. Stay in school, a mind is a terrible thing to waste.
I was gonna say "whoosh!" but then I reread GP and couldn't tell if it really was a joke, or an honest lack of statistics comprehension.
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Some people are helpless regardless of what OS they're using. They require constant care and feeding even if they are using an Apple tablet. Even Apple products won't "save" those kinds of people. They are entirely hopeless.
Re: (Score:2)
On my Android: $150 in paid apps
My wife? All free apps on both platforms. That's 1 for android and 0 for iOS.