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I'm always really surprised to see the large representation of Macs in the hacker community. Apple seems to be loved by consumers, which no doubt makes people

I'm always really surprised to see the large representation of Macs in the hacker community. Apple seems to be loved by consumers, which no doubt makes people want to target things like the iPhone. But I admit I haven't bought anything from them because from my perspective their policies seem to be generally hostile to developers, and they seem to advocate the most-walled garden that they can get away with. I'm guessing though that my views are perhaps either way off kilter, or people just don't mind as much as I do about these sort of things?

zdw 15y ago
The point of people using OS X is that it works out of the box with things like power management, has great software design, runs a legitimate unix CLI, and has solid commercial apps like MS Office and Adobe CS. In the portable realm other OS's fail on at least some/all of these points, hence all the Mac laptop users.
bmelton 15y ago
Developing FOR the Apple garden is different than developing WITHIN the Apple garden. Simply put, the Mac is probably the best development platform for a number of reasons. The hardware is generally top notch, the platform is, despite a lot of add-ons, nix-based (which means you have Vim, access to perl, python, ruby, Bash shell), can be dual-booted into Windows for access to Windows-only tools (Visual Studio, for example) and IS the only acceptable development platform for Mac tools. In short, if I want to do Mac development, I have to have a Mac; and there's little that the Mac can't do for any other platforms.
athst 15y ago
If you walk around any gathering of hackers/tech people in Silicon Valley, a vast majority of people will have Mac notebooks. It's gotta be like 95%+. Robert Scoble noted this phenomenon recently: http://scobleizer.com/2011/04/12/does-anyone-in-silicon-valley-care-about-windows-anymore/ http://scobleizer.com/2011/04/12/does-anyone-in-silicon-vall...
sbalea 15y ago
Unix core with a nice UI, ability to run professional applications, can be used to develop for all major platforms, either desktop or mobile.

zdw 15y ago

The point of people using OS X is that it works out of the box with things like power management, has great software design, runs a legitimate unix CLI, and has solid commercial apps like MS Office and Adobe CS. In the portable realm other OS's fail on at least some/all of these points, hence all the Mac laptop users.

bmelton 15y ago

Developing FOR the Apple garden is different than developing WITHIN the Apple garden. Simply put, the Mac is probably the best development platform for a number of reasons. The hardware is generally top notch, the platform is, despite a lot of add-ons, nix-based (which means you have Vim, access to perl, python, ruby, Bash shell), can be dual-booted into Windows for access to Windows-only tools (Visual Studio, for example) and IS the only acceptable development platform for Mac tools. In short, if I want to do Mac development, I have to have a Mac; and there's little that the Mac can't do for any other platforms.

athst 15y ago

If you walk around any gathering of hackers/tech people in Silicon Valley, a vast majority of people will have Mac notebooks. It's gotta be like 95%+. Robert Scoble noted this phenomenon recently: http://scobleizer.com/2011/04/12/does-anyone-in-silicon-valley-care-about-windows-anymore/ http://scobleizer.com/2011/04/12/does-anyone-in-silicon-vall...

sbalea 15y ago

Unix core with a nice UI, ability to run professional applications, can be used to develop for all major platforms, either desktop or mobile.