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Over the past year and a bit, I've seen far more Surface Books than before, and I put that entirely down to the delay in Apple releasing the new MBP model. A lo

Over the past year and a bit, I've seen far more Surface Books than before, and I put that entirely down to the delay in Apple releasing the new MBP model. A lot of people wanted a new model, and Apple took their sweet time, so they went for a high-end alternative from Microsoft. Five years ago, most developers at the .NET user groups I attended were either using a MBP, or whatever shitty cheap laptop their company gave them. Now, it's either a Surface Book, a Surface, the odd older MBP, or the cheap work laptop. In the Linux world, I've only seen a handful of Surfaces, and one guy using a Surface Book with a VirtualBox VM for Debian (my preferred setup too). The average dev still seems to be largely on the Apple train, which is understandable as the MBP is still a fantastic device. Outside of the development world, I see a few Surfaces in the wild, but nowhere near the amount of Macbooks I see. It's definitely grown/growing though, probably because the Surface is a legitimately good machine in a sea of alright to mediocre machines. I'd say that for every twenty Macbooks I see in the wild, I see one Surface, which is pretty good. In terms of TV, that's probably about the same too, since Apple machines seem to be everywhere on TV and in the movies. Disclaimer: Proud Surface Book owner.

sho_hn 9y ago
I own a Surface Book as well. I'm also a developer on KDE Plasma 5, and wrote quite a bit of the core UI of that product on the SB over the past 2 1/2 years. It's not been a ride without bumps to run Linux on this thing (though it's quite easy now) -- but the uniquely wonderful display made the struggles worth it for me. Meanwhile Apple just doesn't really offer anything that sets them apart.
- EnderMB 9y ago
  Out of interest, what distro do you use? I tried to run Ubuntu on mine a while back, and ran into nothing but issues, so I stick to a VM with Debian nowadays.
  - sho_hn 9y ago
    Fedora. During the first year I built my own kernel that was Fedora's with some patches applied (I published it in a COPR for others to use as well) - it was needed even just to get a working keyboard and trackpad at the time. Around maybe the start of 2017 this became fortunately unnecessary, with the stock F26+ distro kernels driving everything but the touchscreen these days. So up to that point it's install and forget. Currently I build jakeday's kernel source tree (which he builds binaries from for Ubuntu) on Fedora to have the touchscreen working as well, as Intel never mainlined the driver for it. If you're running Ubuntu, just throwing jakeday's kernel PPA in there should do the trick. r/surfacelinux is probably the best community resource for this enterprise.
adriand 9y ago
Anecdotally I seem to be seeing them quite a bit too, particularly within the business world, and within that, particularly within larger enterprises. I seem to see fewer iPads. Product placement aside, anecdotally it seems like Microsoft is on the right track. Disclaimer: I own no Microsoft products.
- EnderMB 9y ago
  I've definitely seen this shift, mainly because a lot of people seem to be coming to the realisation that the iPad is a fantastic tablet, but a shitty work device. I like the iPad, and I like the idea of using it as a basic client for cloud-based work, but I think a lot of people take for granted how complex the tooling they use in day-to-day work is.
rat87 9y ago
> The average dev still seems to be largely on the Apple train, which is understandable as the MBP is still a fantastic device. Other then ruby devs who uses macs? I'd think Lenovo would be far more popular
- joe_fishfish 9y ago
  iOS devs, because they have to.
- d4mi3n 9y ago
  I've seen a few Clojure and Java devs on Macs recently.
- electric_sheep 9y ago
  Most webdevs that I know do. JS stack for sure appears to favor it.
- EnderMB 9y ago
  Same goes for Python and JavaScript in my experience. A lot of people see Mac as "close enough" for any Linux based development, and will build on a Mac and deploy to a Linux based server. In terms of Lenovo, they were usually pretty popular, although I lumped these in with the "cheap devices" as I would often see far more Ideapads than Thinkpads, because they were cheaper for the employer.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  Actual mac devs targeting Apple operating systems.
- derrikcurran 9y ago
  As mentioned, JS devs seem to favor Macs heavily and the majority of popular JS-related tools seem to be built for *nix first. As a Windows user, I frequently ran into annoying friction. Like some step in a complicated build process failing because someone used `&&` in an NPM script. That said, I've switched to a WSL environment (native Linux on Windows) and it has handled everything I've thrown at it so far, including make scripts, GUI apps, etc.
majewsky 9y ago
> Five years ago, most developers at the .NET user groups I attended were either using a MBP, or whatever shitty cheap laptop their company gave them. Now, it's either a Surface Book, a Surface, the odd older MBP, or the cheap work laptop. Anecdata: While most in our team are using Macbooks, I'm seeing an increasing amount of people using a Lenovo X1 Yoga. I made the switch as well last month. However, that might just be a consequence of what our employer offers: The X1 Yoga is simply the best dev machine one can buy in the internal store (not counting Macbooks, I'm not aware of their current lineup).
eitland 9y ago
> The average dev still seems to be largely on the Apple train, which is understandable as the MBP is still a fantastic device. Warning: I didn't count, the following is just what I think I see. In my current job a little more than 50% seems to be using Windows on decent hardware. The rest seems to be split equally between Mac and Linux (again on decent hardware) with coding PMs and backenders preferrimg Linux and coders with design responsibilities preferring Mac.

sho_hn 9y ago

I own a Surface Book as well. I'm also a developer on KDE Plasma 5, and wrote quite a bit of the core UI of that product on the SB over the past 2 1/2 years. It's not been a ride without bumps to run Linux on this thing (though it's quite easy now) -- but the uniquely wonderful display made the struggles worth it for me. Meanwhile Apple just doesn't really offer anything that sets them apart.

EnderMB 9y ago
Out of interest, what distro do you use? I tried to run Ubuntu on mine a while back, and ran into nothing but issues, so I stick to a VM with Debian nowadays.
- sho_hn 9y ago
  Fedora. During the first year I built my own kernel that was Fedora's with some patches applied (I published it in a COPR for others to use as well) - it was needed even just to get a working keyboard and trackpad at the time. Around maybe the start of 2017 this became fortunately unnecessary, with the stock F26+ distro kernels driving everything but the touchscreen these days. So up to that point it's install and forget. Currently I build jakeday's kernel source tree (which he builds binaries from for Ubuntu) on Fedora to have the touchscreen working as well, as Intel never mainlined the driver for it. If you're running Ubuntu, just throwing jakeday's kernel PPA in there should do the trick. r/surfacelinux is probably the best community resource for this enterprise.

adriand 9y ago

Anecdotally I seem to be seeing them quite a bit too, particularly within the business world, and within that, particularly within larger enterprises. I seem to see fewer iPads. Product placement aside, anecdotally it seems like Microsoft is on the right track. Disclaimer: I own no Microsoft products.

EnderMB 9y ago
I've definitely seen this shift, mainly because a lot of people seem to be coming to the realisation that the iPad is a fantastic tablet, but a shitty work device. I like the iPad, and I like the idea of using it as a basic client for cloud-based work, but I think a lot of people take for granted how complex the tooling they use in day-to-day work is.

rat87 9y ago

> The average dev still seems to be largely on the Apple train, which is understandable as the MBP is still a fantastic device. Other then ruby devs who uses macs? I'd think Lenovo would be far more popular

joe_fishfish 9y ago
iOS devs, because they have to.
d4mi3n 9y ago
I've seen a few Clojure and Java devs on Macs recently.
electric_sheep 9y ago
Most webdevs that I know do. JS stack for sure appears to favor it.
EnderMB 9y ago
Same goes for Python and JavaScript in my experience. A lot of people see Mac as "close enough" for any Linux based development, and will build on a Mac and deploy to a Linux based server. In terms of Lenovo, they were usually pretty popular, although I lumped these in with the "cheap devices" as I would often see far more Ideapads than Thinkpads, because they were cheaper for the employer.
pjmlp 9y ago
Actual mac devs targeting Apple operating systems.
derrikcurran 9y ago
As mentioned, JS devs seem to favor Macs heavily and the majority of popular JS-related tools seem to be built for *nix first. As a Windows user, I frequently ran into annoying friction. Like some step in a complicated build process failing because someone used `&&` in an NPM script. That said, I've switched to a WSL environment (native Linux on Windows) and it has handled everything I've thrown at it so far, including make scripts, GUI apps, etc.

majewsky 9y ago

> Five years ago, most developers at the .NET user groups I attended were either using a MBP, or whatever shitty cheap laptop their company gave them. Now, it's either a Surface Book, a Surface, the odd older MBP, or the cheap work laptop. Anecdata: While most in our team are using Macbooks, I'm seeing an increasing amount of people using a Lenovo X1 Yoga. I made the switch as well last month. However, that might just be a consequence of what our employer offers: The X1 Yoga is simply the best dev machine one can buy in the internal store (not counting Macbooks, I'm not aware of their current lineup).

eitland 9y ago

> The average dev still seems to be largely on the Apple train, which is understandable as the MBP is still a fantastic device. Warning: I didn't count, the following is just what I think I see. In my current job a little more than 50% seems to be using Windows on decent hardware. The rest seems to be split equally between Mac and Linux (again on decent hardware) with coding PMs and backenders preferrimg Linux and coders with design responsibilities preferring Mac.