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I had to stop the job interview when suddenly they said that I must use Mac. They ship MacBook to you and you have no choice of using Linux or anything else. Co

I had to stop the job interview when suddenly they said that I must use Mac. They ship MacBook to you and you have no choice of using Linux or anything else. Corporate policy. It's literally unusable for me after 15+ years on Linux with KDE (mostly). Tried Mac for 4 months at one of the previous jobs but escaped to a comfort zone. Sometimes habits are too strong, and alternative is not appealing enough.

synergy20 4y ago
same here, if I'm told I must use Mac at work, I'm out immediately.
plgonzalezrx8 4y ago
This seems so elitist that seems crazy to me. Maybe you're not as good as you think you are if a GUI change will literally make you "Literally Unusable". Especially with the mac terminal being Darwin which is virtually just Unix, and with Brew you can install literally anything you need for your workflow. I use arch btw.
- oleg_antonyan 4y ago
  It certainty is elitist to a degree of laziness and 2021 job market. B/c why switch to something new that I know I don't like. But who knows what else year 2022 brings us, I wouldn't mind switching to Mac if this is literally the question of survival. Luckily not yet
kennend3 4y ago
I find some of these "use a mac at work" companies do it because boring companies are trying to be "hip and cool". One place i know uses Java exclusively, but the devs all have macbooks because they are cool? How/why does a macbook improve java app development vs the standard issue Lenovo's? It is like these old and boring companies think that by using macs they are suddenly "trendy and hip" and the millennials will flock to them?
- parasubvert 4y ago
  It’s all down to taste. I loathe Lenovos and would never want to be forced to use one. I’d tolerate an ASUS ROG laptop or even a Dell XPS. But Mac would easily be the best quality. It has nothing to do with being hip or cool, it’s a taste preference. If anything, Linux is the hipster preference. Many smaller companies also prefer managing Macs rather than Windows. Though I’ve rarely seen a technical company reject Linux outright.
  - kennend3 4y ago
    Again, individual experiences vary and this is not my experience. What does it mean when a company buys a few dozen macbooks, but has zero mac experience and when they fail they end up in a drawer because no one knows how to fix them? To me this screams "poor planning". When the lenovo's failed they were sent to the in-house tech team, usually they were simply reimaged and put back into production. One of the macbooks sat in a desk for ~8 months due to some "boot issue". If it boils down to "taste" and your entire company is based on Lenovo laptop/desktops then moving to a mac would seem odd. Again more odd once you realize you cant support them.
- oleg_antonyan 4y ago
  I think in this case it was more about prejudice about security and standardization (yeah, in full-remote international env). Like, what if an evil virus steals the client's data from my PC, and the chances of this happening somehow higher on Linux than on Mac
- pwinnski 4y ago
  It is dramatically, nearly infinitely easier for an IT team to support a single platform, and forcing all employees to use Linux is an absolute non-starter. Oh, you say, I'll maintain my own Linux laptop! But no, all company-owned computers must be managed by IT, and many of the tools they use to do so don't support any flavor of Linux. So what you're asking for is really quite a lot more work for IT, if possible at all, and not worth it, despite occasionally losing people as an employee.
prmoustache 4y ago
I never own a macbook, but wouldn't a default install with only one application installed being an hypervisor to run a linux vm work for you? I guess that is totally what I would be doing if I was asked to use MacOs, using all but 2GB of ram to the VM. I have no idea which is available for Mac but I think all modern hypervisors support multiple monitors nowadays.

synergy20 4y ago

same here, if I'm told I must use Mac at work, I'm out immediately.

plgonzalezrx8 4y ago

This seems so elitist that seems crazy to me. Maybe you're not as good as you think you are if a GUI change will literally make you "Literally Unusable". Especially with the mac terminal being Darwin which is virtually just Unix, and with Brew you can install literally anything you need for your workflow. I use arch btw.

oleg_antonyan 4y ago
It certainty is elitist to a degree of laziness and 2021 job market. B/c why switch to something new that I know I don't like. But who knows what else year 2022 brings us, I wouldn't mind switching to Mac if this is literally the question of survival. Luckily not yet

kennend3 4y ago

I find some of these "use a mac at work" companies do it because boring companies are trying to be "hip and cool". One place i know uses Java exclusively, but the devs all have macbooks because they are cool? How/why does a macbook improve java app development vs the standard issue Lenovo's? It is like these old and boring companies think that by using macs they are suddenly "trendy and hip" and the millennials will flock to them?

parasubvert 4y ago
It’s all down to taste. I loathe Lenovos and would never want to be forced to use one. I’d tolerate an ASUS ROG laptop or even a Dell XPS. But Mac would easily be the best quality. It has nothing to do with being hip or cool, it’s a taste preference. If anything, Linux is the hipster preference. Many smaller companies also prefer managing Macs rather than Windows. Though I’ve rarely seen a technical company reject Linux outright.
- kennend3 4y ago
  Again, individual experiences vary and this is not my experience. What does it mean when a company buys a few dozen macbooks, but has zero mac experience and when they fail they end up in a drawer because no one knows how to fix them? To me this screams "poor planning". When the lenovo's failed they were sent to the in-house tech team, usually they were simply reimaged and put back into production. One of the macbooks sat in a desk for ~8 months due to some "boot issue". If it boils down to "taste" and your entire company is based on Lenovo laptop/desktops then moving to a mac would seem odd. Again more odd once you realize you cant support them.
oleg_antonyan 4y ago
I think in this case it was more about prejudice about security and standardization (yeah, in full-remote international env). Like, what if an evil virus steals the client's data from my PC, and the chances of this happening somehow higher on Linux than on Mac
pwinnski 4y ago
It is dramatically, nearly infinitely easier for an IT team to support a single platform, and forcing all employees to use Linux is an absolute non-starter. Oh, you say, I'll maintain my own Linux laptop! But no, all company-owned computers must be managed by IT, and many of the tools they use to do so don't support any flavor of Linux. So what you're asking for is really quite a lot more work for IT, if possible at all, and not worth it, despite occasionally losing people as an employee.

prmoustache 4y ago

I never own a macbook, but wouldn't a default install with only one application installed being an hypervisor to run a linux vm work for you? I guess that is totally what I would be doing if I was asked to use MacOs, using all but 2GB of ram to the VM. I have no idea which is available for Mac but I think all modern hypervisors support multiple monitors nowadays.