You'll need to expand on "choice of applications" because most things are UNIX or UNIX-like compatible and nearly everything I use on Linux is Linux/Mac compati

You'll need to expand on "choice of applications" because most things are UNIX or UNIX-like compatible and nearly everything I use on Linux is Linux/Mac compatible. If anything, Windows is lacking and using things like Cygwin isn't good enough for many things. xCode is walled garden specific. If you're developing for Apple products it might make sense to use Apple products that will be designed to make developing for Apple products easier. I don't see how this is a "plus" to any developer who isn't developing for Apple products. There are plenty of devs who don't work on code related to Apple products at all! Similarly, iOS integration is moot. What if they use Android? Don't need awesome iOS integration if you don't wall yourself off into Apple's garden. I like polishing my own interface because I absolutely detest the design of Mac. That's a flavor and is not "factually" better. Many of the design decisions from Apple make me scratch my head in confusion.