Why do so many programmers who aren't developing for Mac/iOS use Macs for their job? Why not use Linux and get a better specced computer for the same price?

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I was given a Mac. Most devs here use Linux and the data crunchers use Windows. The Mac was a left over build server, apparently. Maybe it's because I'm an intern and Macs have more training wheels. Maybe they just want something to work well out of the box for the price. Maybe they just didn't want to spend money.

Development on a Mac isn't so bad once you learn the shell is nearly identical to most Linux systems. The GUI barely gets in the way after that. The only two annoyances are the command key and the fact that finder doesn't open straight to ~/

@chadd17 I find it hard to believe that Mac is easier to use/works better out-of-the-box than Ubuntu for example. I actually had my Mum use Linux for a good while, after I gave her a tutorial of how the UI works she started using it without any issues. Now one of my brothers bought her a Mac and it's quite frequent now that she has issues with the computer, and, surprisingly enough, so do I. Macs are very biased towards Apple software and hardware, using anything that isn't made by Apple causes issues (which are fixable, but annoying nonetheless).

I would use Linux, but fucking iOS development =(

To give you an idea, our company buys Mac's because you legally need to own them to develop for OSX/iOS and because just money so who cares.
Even though most of the colleagues never develop for OSX/iOS, it is a 'just in case'.

@xsacha Wow, it's quite sad that one company could impact an entire market of people so easily by simply making their software exclusive.

I use Mac because my design software only works on it. Also, I quite like OSX. If I was doing something really CPU intensive I'd probably get a desktop pc and install Linux on it.

Well... I have my gripes with Linux.
At this moment, with X server mainly. It just always requires setting up some config files in a VARIETY of locations (seriously. I still don't understand soooo many files of X server.).
Not to mention the Bluetooth speaker always getting random disconnects and sound falling way off behind the actual content being played.
Linux is great. But there is just too much config required for it to run and isn't even consistent in UI (GTK vs Qt anyone?) 😞

To test websites on safari as webdev. But we also got windows pcs for that.

@Electrux that's the part I hate about Linux

X server and it's million configs. I am looking at NixOS, right now.

The best Linux to use out of the box is deepin.

@bhedia perhaps. As far as Linux flavors go, I just like Arch. AUR is too easy to work with. But X server is on every Linux distro. Literally the only UNIX/it's derivatives I know which don't use X server is MacOS ( Quartz ). There is also the open Indiana's DE and solaris's CDE but m not sure if they use X or not. 😞😞

@Electrux There is Wayland too. It is literally the X server replacement. It also has a X server call to Wayland converter.

It's under adoption and very new, but if you check out Fedora 25, it uses Wayland instead of X Server. And it runs smoothly. There is a i3wm Wayland manager called Sway, in case, you like those.

Read all about it, https://wayland.freedesktop.org/faq...

@bhedia most applications still run using X so u will have to use the XWayland intermediate application anyways. And Nvidia and Wayland aren't really in terms right now so till Wayland grows solid and is decently supported without the XWayland thing, I'll pass 😅

@Electrux Yup, that's true. I, too, am hesitant to switch to Wayland.

@Electrux Well, first of all, GTK and QT are frameworks used to develop GUI applications. They don't really have much to do with Linux itself as both frameworks are also available under Windows. But as far as desktops go, the fact that you can choose how your system will look like is an advantage as far as I'm concerned. As for the X server configs, why do you need to configure the X server so much? What GPU do you have? I have R9 290s in crossfire and I'm just using the open-source driver that comes with Fedora and it all runs very well. Also had a very good experience with Intel iGPUs on Linux, their drivers are nearing perfection, no need to configure anything at all and everything just works.

Because I have more money than sense.

I love my MacBook because of its built quality, because of its great battery life and because of its ability to boot all the three 'big' operating systems.
Also there are more relevant programs for me that run only on macOS...
If I wasn't using a portable device, I would rather buy a custom built Linux PC than a Mac workstation!

I'm totally in love with Linux but these are the reasons I recently bought my first MacBook Pro:

- battery life
- weight
- stable system (never again wifi or bluetooth doing crazy things while I'm trying to finish a job in time)
- I prefer a great screen if I need to stare at it all day... With good support from the OS
- curiosity about macOS... You have to know something in order to talk about it.
- Unix inside, feels like linux

You can get some of those on other laptops too, but a MacBook has all of them, and they work perfectly.

Unfortunately I also hate a lot of Apple stupid decisions, like why the fuck didn't you include a fucking adapter in my fucking expensive laptop, hippie morons.

The only reason I'm using an expensive mac instead of a high end Linux desktop is because I need to be able to develop ios apps. Fuck Apple and their exclusive ecosystem.

simply because they want unix without the need to configure shit themself and because they prefer to already have support from some kind of software instead of waiting for a port or shit like that... not that i support this kind of thing but its the only reason i would accept to buy an apple device

Since work already gives me a mbp, I had to get something different/better so I got a Razer Blade for personal.