9 ms·

> developers next, Why would developers switch from mac to windows? If they're alienated by what Apple is doing, they're unlikely to be happy with Microsoft. L

by wyager 10y ago

> developers next, Why would developers switch from mac to windows? If they're alienated by what Apple is doing, they're unlikely to be happy with Microsoft. Linux, sure. Of course, I think this is exactly the sort of misprediction people on HN tend to make, where it turns out that (surprise) Apple actually knows more about market demands than random internet commentators. Remember how we were predicting that the new Touch Bar MacBook Pro would fail hard, but it ended up being the best selling MBP ever?

rodgerd 10y ago
> Of course, I think this is exactly the sort of misprediction people on HN tend to make, Says the guy who suggests Linux as a desktop.
- grive 10y ago
  Suggesting linux as a viable desktop is not equivalent to predicting that $CURRENT_YEAR is the year of the linux desktop. You being dismissive of the idea on this ground is illogical.
Baeocystin 10y ago
Best-selling? Sure, I can believe that. Pent-up demand alone likely accounts for much of it. Best-selling to developers? Not a chance.
- illuminati1911 10y ago
  Any statistics to back that up? Because some random hacker news comments dislike new MacBooks it doesn't mean other developers would. I find it hard to see any realistic alternatives for MacBooks in software development. They give you all the tools you need from the Windows world that are not available on linux like Office, Photoshop etc. and it is still a UNIX system which can do all the stuff that linux can without kernel panics, crashes, bugs and other crap. Also unlike Windows or Linux, a single macOS installation can last pretty much forever and doesn't need to reinstalled every year because of the lost performance like Windows. And last but not least MacBooks are well optimised for the hardware they run on which gives them 1.5-2.5 times the performance with the same hardware as on Windows or Linux. The whole thing about complaining about new MacBooks is same thing as with iPhones. People complain because it's trendy to whine about anything Apple does even if they would create eternal world peace and still everybody will buy them because there is nothing better or even similar on the market.
  - Baeocystin 10y ago
    You mean direct, market-research-supplied numbers? No. I am just one of thousands of people who makes a living in the tech world. What I can say is that 1) A very large portion of other devs I know use(d) MacBooks, and 2) A very large portion of them said "F this, I'm out" when Apple released their most recent machine. Many switched to Surfaces. Your hyperbole against Linux and Windows does your point no credit. Linux has been rock-stable for a very, very long time, and Windows 10 is a pleasure to use, particularly on touch-enabled devices. MS went through severe growing pains with Win8, but those days are past. And the OS/hardware combinations that have emerged since make Apple's offerings feel old and out of touch.
    - paulddraper 10y ago
      > Many switched to Surfaces They switched to Surfaces because they wanted power-user hardware?
      - Baeocystin 10y ago
        They switched to Surfaces because they saw what I was doing with mine, wanted to be able to do the same, and Apple had no comparable answer. Simple as that.
        Philipp__ 10y ago
        But that is just people in your surrounding. Anyone amazed by Surface (tablet and touchscreen things) switched but that is ok, it is not so much of Apple's loss as of MS's gain. I do not want touchscreen, I don't need it, I need classic laptop and many Apple MacBook users want just that, a laptop, no touchscreen.
        Baeocystin 10y ago
        For what it is worth, I used to feel exactly the same way until I got a machine that had one. Now I miss it when touch is unavailable. Being able to use touch, mouse/trackpad, & keyboard all at the same time is, perhaps surprisingly, a very pleasant way to work. To pick one example: being able to flick through long documents with a finger while keeping focus on other parts of the screen alone has been a huge productivity booster, and I do not say that lightly.
weq 10y ago
Why would a developer be on a mac in the first place? Cause ur a fanboy? Cause ur against monopolys? If i need to build code that apple says can only be built on a mac, i simply spin up my mac VM and point some tools dont need to drink any koolaid to get the job done. MDI + keyboard skills beats vim ninjas any day of the week.
- adrianN 10y ago
  Back when the first intel macs came out, they actually were made for developers and were great machines.
  - ubernostrum 10y ago
    they actually were made for developers Apple has never, so far as I am aware, deliberately targeted developers as a primary audience of a laptop computer. Apple's laptops became popular because they ran an operating system that was Unix under the hood, with a nice UI and good set of non-developer applications, which made them good as machines a developer could use for work and for non-work (Linux on the desktop being not so great at the second part of that). Apple has certainly been happy to make money from developers buying laptops as a result of this, but has consistently ignored the expressed wishes and desires of developers when updating its laptop lines, meaning Apple was popular in spite of Apple's indifference, rather than because Apple lovingly catered to this audience. In other words: if you were looking for an executive to run around the stage screaming "DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS!", I think that was probably some other company, and they got ridiculed for it...
    - Lio 10y ago
      I believe you are mistaken. Apple has certainly courted scientific and other developers before. Here's an article about when they stopped targeting science. https://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/apple-drops-science-as-core-market-web-page-deleted https://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/apple-drops-science-...
      - 10y ago
romanovcode 10y ago
When Linux Subsystem will be finally finished I personally don't see any reason to use Linux as desktop environment. As for MacOS looks - Windows also are releasing update to their visuals this year which looks pretty darn aesthetically pleasing. [0] [0] https://blogs-images.forbes.com/amitchowdhry/files/2017/02/Project-NEON.jpg https://blogs-images.forbes.com/amitchowdhry/files/2017/02/P...
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- wueihgiug 10y ago
  i dunno...part of why i use Linux or MacOS is the knowledge that under the hood they're well designed. With Windows, no matter how good it looks, I feel like it's an ugly system, not to mention insecure.
  - raesene6 10y ago
    err modern windows has many good security measures and in many cases Microsoft are ahead of the curve in adopting new security techniques. For me "insecure windows" is an old trope and not particuarly accurate any more.
    - dawnerd 10y ago
      The most insecure part of the operating system is the user itself. You can only do so much to stop people from doing dumb things.
  - pdpi 10y ago
    How so? It's definitely an unfamiliar system, for me, and there might or might not be vulnerabilities in the current implementation, but I have no reason to believe that the windows NT model is intrinsically less secure than the unix model.
  - monsieurbanana 10y ago
    I just want to randomly poke in the discussion to say that out of the three big OS, MacOS user interface is the most vomit-inducing. I know this feeling isn't shared by most. Now that windows has nice workspaces and an already usable UNIX environnement (Windows Subsystem still has things to iron out, but it's very nice for a beta), my personal ranking became: Linux > Windows > MacOS I see nothing that MacOS offers that Windows doesn't, whereas Windows has potential for much better hardware specs, games, bigger user base. The only thing left for Apple is their 16:10 screen and their per-monitor scaling.
return0 10y ago
Most servers run linux, which means many developers are bound to access them remotely, which makes the desktop OS a bit irrelevant. And many people may work faster with windows desktop (win7 for me please, none of that tablet crap).

by wyager 10y ago

rodgerd 10y ago

> Of course, I think this is exactly the sort of misprediction people on HN tend to make, Says the guy who suggests Linux as a desktop.

grive 10y ago
Suggesting linux as a viable desktop is not equivalent to predicting that $CURRENT_YEAR is the year of the linux desktop. You being dismissive of the idea on this ground is illogical.

Baeocystin 10y ago

Best-selling? Sure, I can believe that. Pent-up demand alone likely accounts for much of it. Best-selling to developers? Not a chance.

illuminati1911 10y ago
Any statistics to back that up? Because some random hacker news comments dislike new MacBooks it doesn't mean other developers would. I find it hard to see any realistic alternatives for MacBooks in software development. They give you all the tools you need from the Windows world that are not available on linux like Office, Photoshop etc. and it is still a UNIX system which can do all the stuff that linux can without kernel panics, crashes, bugs and other crap. Also unlike Windows or Linux, a single macOS installation can last pretty much forever and doesn't need to reinstalled every year because of the lost performance like Windows. And last but not least MacBooks are well optimised for the hardware they run on which gives them 1.5-2.5 times the performance with the same hardware as on Windows or Linux. The whole thing about complaining about new MacBooks is same thing as with iPhones. People complain because it's trendy to whine about anything Apple does even if they would create eternal world peace and still everybody will buy them because there is nothing better or even similar on the market.
- Baeocystin 10y ago
  You mean direct, market-research-supplied numbers? No. I am just one of thousands of people who makes a living in the tech world. What I can say is that 1) A very large portion of other devs I know use(d) MacBooks, and 2) A very large portion of them said "F this, I'm out" when Apple released their most recent machine. Many switched to Surfaces. Your hyperbole against Linux and Windows does your point no credit. Linux has been rock-stable for a very, very long time, and Windows 10 is a pleasure to use, particularly on touch-enabled devices. MS went through severe growing pains with Win8, but those days are past. And the OS/hardware combinations that have emerged since make Apple's offerings feel old and out of touch.
  - paulddraper 10y ago
    > Many switched to Surfaces They switched to Surfaces because they wanted power-user hardware?
    - Baeocystin 10y ago
      They switched to Surfaces because they saw what I was doing with mine, wanted to be able to do the same, and Apple had no comparable answer. Simple as that.
      - Philipp__ 10y ago
        But that is just people in your surrounding. Anyone amazed by Surface (tablet and touchscreen things) switched but that is ok, it is not so much of Apple's loss as of MS's gain. I do not want touchscreen, I don't need it, I need classic laptop and many Apple MacBook users want just that, a laptop, no touchscreen.
        Baeocystin 10y ago
        For what it is worth, I used to feel exactly the same way until I got a machine that had one. Now I miss it when touch is unavailable. Being able to use touch, mouse/trackpad, & keyboard all at the same time is, perhaps surprisingly, a very pleasant way to work. To pick one example: being able to flick through long documents with a finger while keeping focus on other parts of the screen alone has been a huge productivity booster, and I do not say that lightly.

weq 10y ago

Why would a developer be on a mac in the first place? Cause ur a fanboy? Cause ur against monopolys? If i need to build code that apple says can only be built on a mac, i simply spin up my mac VM and point some tools dont need to drink any koolaid to get the job done. MDI + keyboard skills beats vim ninjas any day of the week.

adrianN 10y ago
Back when the first intel macs came out, they actually were made for developers and were great machines.
- ubernostrum 10y ago
  they actually were made for developers Apple has never, so far as I am aware, deliberately targeted developers as a primary audience of a laptop computer. Apple's laptops became popular because they ran an operating system that was Unix under the hood, with a nice UI and good set of non-developer applications, which made them good as machines a developer could use for work and for non-work (Linux on the desktop being not so great at the second part of that). Apple has certainly been happy to make money from developers buying laptops as a result of this, but has consistently ignored the expressed wishes and desires of developers when updating its laptop lines, meaning Apple was popular in spite of Apple's indifference, rather than because Apple lovingly catered to this audience. In other words: if you were looking for an executive to run around the stage screaming "DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS!", I think that was probably some other company, and they got ridiculed for it...
  - Lio 10y ago
    I believe you are mistaken. Apple has certainly courted scientific and other developers before. Here's an article about when they stopped targeting science. https://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/apple-drops-science-as-core-market-web-page-deleted https://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/apple-drops-science-...
    - 10y ago

romanovcode 10y ago

When Linux Subsystem will be finally finished I personally don't see any reason to use Linux as desktop environment. As for MacOS looks - Windows also are releasing update to their visuals this year which looks pretty darn aesthetically pleasing. [0] [0] https://blogs-images.forbes.com/amitchowdhry/files/2017/02/Project-NEON.jpg https://blogs-images.forbes.com/amitchowdhry/files/2017/02/P...

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
wueihgiug 10y ago
i dunno...part of why i use Linux or MacOS is the knowledge that under the hood they're well designed. With Windows, no matter how good it looks, I feel like it's an ugly system, not to mention insecure.
- raesene6 10y ago
  err modern windows has many good security measures and in many cases Microsoft are ahead of the curve in adopting new security techniques. For me "insecure windows" is an old trope and not particuarly accurate any more.
  - dawnerd 10y ago
    The most insecure part of the operating system is the user itself. You can only do so much to stop people from doing dumb things.
- pdpi 10y ago
  How so? It's definitely an unfamiliar system, for me, and there might or might not be vulnerabilities in the current implementation, but I have no reason to believe that the windows NT model is intrinsically less secure than the unix model.
- monsieurbanana 10y ago
  I just want to randomly poke in the discussion to say that out of the three big OS, MacOS user interface is the most vomit-inducing. I know this feeling isn't shared by most. Now that windows has nice workspaces and an already usable UNIX environnement (Windows Subsystem still has things to iron out, but it's very nice for a beta), my personal ranking became: Linux > Windows > MacOS I see nothing that MacOS offers that Windows doesn't, whereas Windows has potential for much better hardware specs, games, bigger user base. The only thing left for Apple is their 16:10 screen and their per-monitor scaling.

return0 10y ago

Most servers run linux, which means many developers are bound to access them remotely, which makes the desktop OS a bit irrelevant. And many people may work faster with windows desktop (win7 for me please, none of that tablet crap).