8 ms·

You did not write anything about the actual user experience, which is telling. Is the mere fact that there exist machines which will boot into a non Apple OS su

You did not write anything about the actual user experience, which is telling. Is the mere fact that there exist machines which will boot into a non Apple OS supposed to spell doom for them or something? I just used my first Windows machine in almost ten years as well and... guess what it still sucks. Particularly if you are trying to develop software.

matwood 10y ago
Yeah, every time I boot to Windows to test something on IE I'm reminded why I left Windows. It's a shame because the Surface tablets look nice.
- freehunter 10y ago
  I usually roll my eyes at all the hate people always find for Microsoft in nearly every decision they make and every thing they release into the market. I upgraded my gaming desktop to Windows 8 the day it came out, and I upgraded to Windows 10 when it came out. I've never really had too many problems. But everything new they release and everything I use from them makes me thankful I mostly use Apple products. I don't have to worry about the new version of Windows destroying my computer or forcing itself upon me, and I especially love knowing that my computer will not reboot itself unexpectedly at night due to security updates. I'm glad I have products made by a company that knows what it is and what it does, that focuses on stability and polish. A company that doesn't flap back and forth between consumer and enterprise computing, discontinuing devices and services as fast as they can create them. Maybe I'm still sore from the loss of my Zune, or my Windows Phone, or my TechNet subscription. I didn't start using Macs with the Lisa, or System 7, or even when OS X was released; I'm fairly new. This is only my second Mac. But I used Windows for years, and every time I hear someone say "I'm leaving Apple for Microsoft because Apple has lost their way", what I actually hear is "I'm making a symbolic statement and I don't actually care what the repercussions are." Because if anyone thinks Windows is more stable, more polished, more developer friendly, or has machines with a better build quality, I have to say... you're gonna be surprised. Maybe Apple isn't what it used to be. But it still seems a damn sight better than Windows, in almost every regard.
  - Roritharr 10y ago
    Without providing a wall of text, as someone who has to work on both platforms daily, I have a very different opinion. Windows is an excellent Dev Platform, and of all the default assumptions both systems make, Windows still favors devs more than OSX. I really wonder why people seem to like Finder over Windows Explorer.
    - hatsix 10y ago
      This. I mean, I run linux on all but one of my machines, but if a company made me choose, I'd choose Windows over OSX. Apple doesn't make things dev-friendly, the mountain of volunteers who make homebrew and packages make it dev-friendly. They didn't switch OSX to be nix-based because they wanted to entice developers, they did it because it allowed them to move faster. Meanwhile, MS is releasing their nix subsystem, open-sourcing lots of crap, and generally going out of their way to pull devs back into the fold. I wouldn't switch today, but the last year of releases makes it clear that this has been under way for quite a while... and will continue for many more. If the nix subsystem works as well as they say, I could see myself switching at some point in the future. (because I would really like some decent power management)
      - freehunter 10y ago
        As with all things, this really depends on what your job is. I never use Homebrew. I installed it but I've never used it for anything. All I need is a super-reliable computer and bash. My Red Hat laptop gives me one of those, my Macbook gives me both. But literally my biggest pet peeve with Windows is, it seems every few days I sit down in the morning and log in only to realize it had rebooted itself overnight. Or it's begging me to schedule a reboot. Or I installed a program and immediately afterwards it needs to reboot to finish installing. My Windows machine spends more time shutting down or starting up than it does actually running.
        dingo_bat 10y ago
        I don't get the shutdown reboot problem. Is a restart every 15 days unacceptable in return for reliable, consistent security/bug patches? Even Ubuntu is like that. I've used a mac book air for a little while and the update software had a glitch which caused it to get stuck. So I have zero experience with osx updates.
ladzoppelin 10y ago
Really? Next week you can install WSL (Bash on Windows) on Windows 10 which is amazing considering its in beta. Definitely try it if are developing on a Windows box.
- glibgil 10y ago
  I cannot understand who would down-vote your comment. The Windows Subsystem for Linux is a good thing for software developers https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/commandline/wsl/about https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/commandline/wsl/about
- nol13 10y ago
  If I can viably develop on Windows instead of a slow (on my i3 laptop) Linux VM I'll be thrilled. Not getting my hopes up though.
  - dingo_bat 10y ago
    I'm pretty sure WSL is not enough for any decent sized dev effort. And running Linux on a VM on an i3 would just be masochistic. Stick to Linux would be my suggestion.
    - nol13 10y ago
      It's really not thaat bad most of the time. And I would but I don't trust Windows updates to not eventually trash any dual boot setup, or Linux updates not eventually trash my graphics drivers etc.
      - dingo_bat 10y ago
        WHy not switch completely to Linux? Unless you play games.
        nol13 10y ago
        A bit of LoL here and there, plus little things like being able to cast to my roku hassle free and reliable sleep/suspend. Was all Linux for a few years but the man won. I know I should probably get a real dev machine but this is what I'm working with at the moment. Really my current development needs consist of git, ssh, node, redis, mysql, apache, and python. If WSL can do that I'm all set.
ianai 10y ago
After not owning a Windows machine for around 14 years I bought a dell xps13. I love the design but the Windows experience really leaves the same things to be desired. I've had issues from dell (crappy drivers). But the actual user expedience still lacks. It's 2016 and Windows can't figure out a way to make all apps look ok on a high resolution. Never before have I seen an OS actually fail to shut down.
jwatte 10y ago
I used to love the Mac, but for a long time now, Windows+Linux have outpaced the MacOS experience. Visual Studio runs absolute rings around XCode. And I day this as a vim/make user with a significant Linux investment. Sometimes, I'll port software to windows, only so that I can use Visual Studio! Any OS is fine for browsing the web. Windows is better fort playing games. And VMWare means I can develop my Linux server software in a Linux environment, which avoids any compatibility surprises. 3dsMax or Inventor don't even run on MacOS, but most people luckily don't have that problem :-) So why is MacOS better for "development" again?
WayneBro 10y ago
Windows is awesome. I can and have written volumes on how much better it is than OS X and Linux. Is that telling you anything? You didn't say much about anything either. Hmmm. Anyway, I've developed software for twenty years on Windows and so have a ton of others, so I'd really like to know what your problem is?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
deviate_X 10y ago
I'm not sure what kind of developer can't cope with switching operating systems. I actually have a harder time using OSX than Windows, but that just because I spend far more time using Windows. Is silly to just condemn something blindly just because it isn't OSX.
intoverflow2 10y ago
Been a Mac user for 14 years now, didn't miss the windows world one bit until the past year or so. Almost no (or maybe no now?) mac ships with a decent performance CUDA card, disciplines like 3D rendering are getting more and more reliant on GPU computing and almost no one supports OpenCL it's all CUDA. I'm currently debating if I should put together a hackjob external GPU or if I should just spend about $200 and get a full PC to work on.

matwood 10y ago

Yeah, every time I boot to Windows to test something on IE I'm reminded why I left Windows. It's a shame because the Surface tablets look nice.

freehunter 10y ago
I usually roll my eyes at all the hate people always find for Microsoft in nearly every decision they make and every thing they release into the market. I upgraded my gaming desktop to Windows 8 the day it came out, and I upgraded to Windows 10 when it came out. I've never really had too many problems. But everything new they release and everything I use from them makes me thankful I mostly use Apple products. I don't have to worry about the new version of Windows destroying my computer or forcing itself upon me, and I especially love knowing that my computer will not reboot itself unexpectedly at night due to security updates. I'm glad I have products made by a company that knows what it is and what it does, that focuses on stability and polish. A company that doesn't flap back and forth between consumer and enterprise computing, discontinuing devices and services as fast as they can create them. Maybe I'm still sore from the loss of my Zune, or my Windows Phone, or my TechNet subscription. I didn't start using Macs with the Lisa, or System 7, or even when OS X was released; I'm fairly new. This is only my second Mac. But I used Windows for years, and every time I hear someone say "I'm leaving Apple for Microsoft because Apple has lost their way", what I actually hear is "I'm making a symbolic statement and I don't actually care what the repercussions are." Because if anyone thinks Windows is more stable, more polished, more developer friendly, or has machines with a better build quality, I have to say... you're gonna be surprised. Maybe Apple isn't what it used to be. But it still seems a damn sight better than Windows, in almost every regard.
- Roritharr 10y ago
  Without providing a wall of text, as someone who has to work on both platforms daily, I have a very different opinion. Windows is an excellent Dev Platform, and of all the default assumptions both systems make, Windows still favors devs more than OSX. I really wonder why people seem to like Finder over Windows Explorer.
  - hatsix 10y ago
    This. I mean, I run linux on all but one of my machines, but if a company made me choose, I'd choose Windows over OSX. Apple doesn't make things dev-friendly, the mountain of volunteers who make homebrew and packages make it dev-friendly. They didn't switch OSX to be nix-based because they wanted to entice developers, they did it because it allowed them to move faster. Meanwhile, MS is releasing their nix subsystem, open-sourcing lots of crap, and generally going out of their way to pull devs back into the fold. I wouldn't switch today, but the last year of releases makes it clear that this has been under way for quite a while... and will continue for many more. If the nix subsystem works as well as they say, I could see myself switching at some point in the future. (because I would really like some decent power management)
    - freehunter 10y ago
      As with all things, this really depends on what your job is. I never use Homebrew. I installed it but I've never used it for anything. All I need is a super-reliable computer and bash. My Red Hat laptop gives me one of those, my Macbook gives me both. But literally my biggest pet peeve with Windows is, it seems every few days I sit down in the morning and log in only to realize it had rebooted itself overnight. Or it's begging me to schedule a reboot. Or I installed a program and immediately afterwards it needs to reboot to finish installing. My Windows machine spends more time shutting down or starting up than it does actually running.
      - dingo_bat 10y ago
        I don't get the shutdown reboot problem. Is a restart every 15 days unacceptable in return for reliable, consistent security/bug patches? Even Ubuntu is like that. I've used a mac book air for a little while and the update software had a glitch which caused it to get stuck. So I have zero experience with osx updates.

ladzoppelin 10y ago

Really? Next week you can install WSL (Bash on Windows) on Windows 10 which is amazing considering its in beta. Definitely try it if are developing on a Windows box.

glibgil 10y ago
I cannot understand who would down-vote your comment. The Windows Subsystem for Linux is a good thing for software developers https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/commandline/wsl/about https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/commandline/wsl/about
nol13 10y ago
If I can viably develop on Windows instead of a slow (on my i3 laptop) Linux VM I'll be thrilled. Not getting my hopes up though.
- dingo_bat 10y ago
  I'm pretty sure WSL is not enough for any decent sized dev effort. And running Linux on a VM on an i3 would just be masochistic. Stick to Linux would be my suggestion.
  - nol13 10y ago
    It's really not thaat bad most of the time. And I would but I don't trust Windows updates to not eventually trash any dual boot setup, or Linux updates not eventually trash my graphics drivers etc.
    - dingo_bat 10y ago
      WHy not switch completely to Linux? Unless you play games.
      - nol13 10y ago
        A bit of LoL here and there, plus little things like being able to cast to my roku hassle free and reliable sleep/suspend. Was all Linux for a few years but the man won. I know I should probably get a real dev machine but this is what I'm working with at the moment. Really my current development needs consist of git, ssh, node, redis, mysql, apache, and python. If WSL can do that I'm all set.

ianai 10y ago

After not owning a Windows machine for around 14 years I bought a dell xps13. I love the design but the Windows experience really leaves the same things to be desired. I've had issues from dell (crappy drivers). But the actual user expedience still lacks. It's 2016 and Windows can't figure out a way to make all apps look ok on a high resolution. Never before have I seen an OS actually fail to shut down.

jwatte 10y ago

I used to love the Mac, but for a long time now, Windows+Linux have outpaced the MacOS experience. Visual Studio runs absolute rings around XCode. And I day this as a vim/make user with a significant Linux investment. Sometimes, I'll port software to windows, only so that I can use Visual Studio! Any OS is fine for browsing the web. Windows is better fort playing games. And VMWare means I can develop my Linux server software in a Linux environment, which avoids any compatibility surprises. 3dsMax or Inventor don't even run on MacOS, but most people luckily don't have that problem :-) So why is MacOS better for "development" again?

WayneBro 10y ago

Windows is awesome. I can and have written volumes on how much better it is than OS X and Linux. Is that telling you anything? You didn't say much about anything either. Hmmm. Anyway, I've developed software for twenty years on Windows and so have a ton of others, so I'd really like to know what your problem is?

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

deviate_X 10y ago

I'm not sure what kind of developer can't cope with switching operating systems. I actually have a harder time using OSX than Windows, but that just because I spend far more time using Windows. Is silly to just condemn something blindly just because it isn't OSX.

intoverflow2 10y ago

Been a Mac user for 14 years now, didn't miss the windows world one bit until the past year or so. Almost no (or maybe no now?) mac ships with a decent performance CUDA card, disciplines like 3D rendering are getting more and more reliant on GPU computing and almost no one supports OpenCL it's all CUDA. I'm currently debating if I should put together a hackjob external GPU or if I should just spend about $200 and get a full PC to work on.