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> The colors screamed "I use a computer but am not a computer person". Back then, culturally, being a computer person was not as accepted as it is now. Chic. N

> The colors screamed "I use a computer but am not a computer person". Back then, culturally, being a computer person was not as accepted as it is now. Chic. Not geek. The marketing claim during the introduction couldn’t have been more fitting and for everything that followed after coming out of apple.

Tijdreiziger 3y ago
I don't know, starting with OS X a lot of devs used Macs because 'it's a UNIX system', and for a while their hardware was relatively consumer-friendly (battery, RAM and disk were user-replacable/upgradable on my 2009 MacBook).
- lapcat 3y ago
  > I don't know, starting with OS X a lot of devs used Macs because 'it's a UNIX system' Yes to this! I was in academia when I switched from Windows to Mac, and UNIX was a big factor. Incidentally, my first Mac was an iMac G4.
  - cm2187 3y ago
    Paradoxically I did the opposite move at the time, I was a teenager who grew up with MacOS and knew it inside out. All my knowledge was basically voided with MacOS X, so if I had to start from scratch anyway, I might as well switch to Windows where I don't need to check the box to know if a game or hardware will be compatible.
- hospitalJail 3y ago
  I kind of wonder if this whole 'Macs and Unix' are some post-purchase rationalization. This makes more sense than it seems, Apple is best in class when it comes to hypnosis. Why does being unix based matter? I imagine if you are doing server stuff you are on Linux/Unix. If you are doing C stuff, you are doing it closer to the end device. If you are doing visual stuff you are doing it on Windows since they have us by the balls. Maybe if you are making iOS apps, but that wouldn't be until the end of the semi-replaceable era. Maybe doing web dev? Yeah probably not, you'd be doing windows with firefox, chrome, and IE for front end. Even in this modern era where Microsoft cannot be trusted and Linux Desktop still cannot handle NVIDIA, people are still choosing to do dev work on those system. The only time I see using Macs is for iOS dev only. (Maybe you might SSH into a server for backend stuff, but 25 year old computers can do that)
  - Libcat99 3y ago
    The out of the box ssh experience on Linux is far superior to windows, ssh mounting of disks, easy scp and rsync access without jumping through hoops. To me, thinking of doing my job from a windows box sounds painful. I'd imagine these necessary tools for Linux server dev/admin are also readily available on Mac, if not installed already. Now, is that worth the price delta? Probably not, but given the sparsity of pre installed, supported Linux hardware I can potentially see the appeal.
    - pjmlp 3y ago
      This is why in hindsight it was a bad idea for Microsoft to never been serious about POSIX subsystem on the Windows NT linage. That is why I even bothered with GNU/Linux to start with. OS X adoption by UNIX crowd proved the point that for a large majority of development community, GNU/Linux itself is irrelevant, what they care about is a POSIX like experience. Hence Microsoft learning by their Windows NT/POSIX management mistakes, and creating WSL to fill that gap. For those of us running Virtual Box and VMWare for years, it only brings the convinience of one product less to care about.
  - macintux 3y ago
    Speaking for myself, I went to CompUSA to see what they had that I could use to build my next home Linux box. I didn’t expect to buy anything, just was window shopping. I wanted to check the Internet price on something, and asked an employee whether any of the demo computers had connectivity. It turned out that only the Mac did. As I started using it, I remembered that I used to be an Apple user, and it would be easier to find commercial software that worked for it, and it was actually UNIX. Terminal and everything. So, I stopped component shopping and headed to my local Apple Store later that week. Bought a G5 tower and I’ve never looked back.
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    Not at all, back when I was at CERN that was exactly the reason many researchers were going for OS X, as the Solaris workstations were being decommissioned, there was a pile of them stacked at my office. The other alternative was Windows 2000/XP, almost no one was caring for GNU/Linux other than on the servers. I was part of the initial group having a go at Scientific Linux, and there weren't that many users of it when I left in 2004. In fact for many years, not sure about nowadays, the IT official policy was that installing GNU/Linux, even Scientific Linux, meant the users were on their own, the only UNIX desktop that they would officially support was OS X.
- scarface_74 3y ago
  The iMac came out in 1997. OS X came out in 2001 and wasn’t usable into 2002-2003.
  - gumby 3y ago
    You should repost this comment at top level. It's an important point, not a nitpick.
  - Tijdreiziger 3y ago
    Yes, but GGP specifically mentioned "everything that followed after coming out of apple [sic]", which I took to mean "all following machines up to the current day."
  - detourdog 3y ago
    There was Mac OS X server 1.2 which was a NeXT foundation with macintosh system 9 gui.
- rhaway84773 3y ago
  The primary reason macs are popular for development is that they’re Unix based. Even Docker, for example, runs natively on Linux and Macs and doesn’t on Windows (or didn’t initially at least…heck it wasn’t even available on Windows for many years until MS itself worked with Docker to bring it to Windows). NodeJS took 2 years to come to Windows, again with MS having to work with Joyent yo achieve this, but was available on Linux and Mac from the outset.
  - nottorp 3y ago
    > Even Docker, for example, runs natively on Linux and Macs It runs natively on Linux. On Macs it starts a Linux VM and then does containers inside that, which adds overhead (and seems to preallocate a lot of ram). Other than that yes, you can have a working GUI and a unixy enough command line on the same machine. And that's why I switched to macs... from linux.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
SoftTalker 3y ago
It's still not accepted, by the way. If you meet someone and they don't start looking around the room for an escape route when they find out you are a "computer person" then they are probably a computer person too.
- JPws_Prntr_Fngr 3y ago
  The money part of tech is accepted. If you have enough of that, people will at least be courteous to your face, even if you're the stereotypical computer person.

Tijdreiziger 3y ago

I don't know, starting with OS X a lot of devs used Macs because 'it's a UNIX system', and for a while their hardware was relatively consumer-friendly (battery, RAM and disk were user-replacable/upgradable on my 2009 MacBook).

lapcat 3y ago
> I don't know, starting with OS X a lot of devs used Macs because 'it's a UNIX system' Yes to this! I was in academia when I switched from Windows to Mac, and UNIX was a big factor. Incidentally, my first Mac was an iMac G4.
- cm2187 3y ago
  Paradoxically I did the opposite move at the time, I was a teenager who grew up with MacOS and knew it inside out. All my knowledge was basically voided with MacOS X, so if I had to start from scratch anyway, I might as well switch to Windows where I don't need to check the box to know if a game or hardware will be compatible.
hospitalJail 3y ago
I kind of wonder if this whole 'Macs and Unix' are some post-purchase rationalization. This makes more sense than it seems, Apple is best in class when it comes to hypnosis. Why does being unix based matter? I imagine if you are doing server stuff you are on Linux/Unix. If you are doing C stuff, you are doing it closer to the end device. If you are doing visual stuff you are doing it on Windows since they have us by the balls. Maybe if you are making iOS apps, but that wouldn't be until the end of the semi-replaceable era. Maybe doing web dev? Yeah probably not, you'd be doing windows with firefox, chrome, and IE for front end. Even in this modern era where Microsoft cannot be trusted and Linux Desktop still cannot handle NVIDIA, people are still choosing to do dev work on those system. The only time I see using Macs is for iOS dev only. (Maybe you might SSH into a server for backend stuff, but 25 year old computers can do that)
- Libcat99 3y ago
  The out of the box ssh experience on Linux is far superior to windows, ssh mounting of disks, easy scp and rsync access without jumping through hoops. To me, thinking of doing my job from a windows box sounds painful. I'd imagine these necessary tools for Linux server dev/admin are also readily available on Mac, if not installed already. Now, is that worth the price delta? Probably not, but given the sparsity of pre installed, supported Linux hardware I can potentially see the appeal.
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    This is why in hindsight it was a bad idea for Microsoft to never been serious about POSIX subsystem on the Windows NT linage. That is why I even bothered with GNU/Linux to start with. OS X adoption by UNIX crowd proved the point that for a large majority of development community, GNU/Linux itself is irrelevant, what they care about is a POSIX like experience. Hence Microsoft learning by their Windows NT/POSIX management mistakes, and creating WSL to fill that gap. For those of us running Virtual Box and VMWare for years, it only brings the convinience of one product less to care about.
- macintux 3y ago
  Speaking for myself, I went to CompUSA to see what they had that I could use to build my next home Linux box. I didn’t expect to buy anything, just was window shopping. I wanted to check the Internet price on something, and asked an employee whether any of the demo computers had connectivity. It turned out that only the Mac did. As I started using it, I remembered that I used to be an Apple user, and it would be easier to find commercial software that worked for it, and it was actually UNIX. Terminal and everything. So, I stopped component shopping and headed to my local Apple Store later that week. Bought a G5 tower and I’ve never looked back.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  Not at all, back when I was at CERN that was exactly the reason many researchers were going for OS X, as the Solaris workstations were being decommissioned, there was a pile of them stacked at my office. The other alternative was Windows 2000/XP, almost no one was caring for GNU/Linux other than on the servers. I was part of the initial group having a go at Scientific Linux, and there weren't that many users of it when I left in 2004. In fact for many years, not sure about nowadays, the IT official policy was that installing GNU/Linux, even Scientific Linux, meant the users were on their own, the only UNIX desktop that they would officially support was OS X.
scarface_74 3y ago
The iMac came out in 1997. OS X came out in 2001 and wasn’t usable into 2002-2003.
- gumby 3y ago
  You should repost this comment at top level. It's an important point, not a nitpick.
- Tijdreiziger 3y ago
  Yes, but GGP specifically mentioned "everything that followed after coming out of apple [sic]", which I took to mean "all following machines up to the current day."
- detourdog 3y ago
  There was Mac OS X server 1.2 which was a NeXT foundation with macintosh system 9 gui.
rhaway84773 3y ago
The primary reason macs are popular for development is that they’re Unix based. Even Docker, for example, runs natively on Linux and Macs and doesn’t on Windows (or didn’t initially at least…heck it wasn’t even available on Windows for many years until MS itself worked with Docker to bring it to Windows). NodeJS took 2 years to come to Windows, again with MS having to work with Joyent yo achieve this, but was available on Linux and Mac from the outset.
- nottorp 3y ago
  > Even Docker, for example, runs natively on Linux and Macs It runs natively on Linux. On Macs it starts a Linux VM and then does containers inside that, which adds overhead (and seems to preallocate a lot of ram). Other than that yes, you can have a working GUI and a unixy enough command line on the same machine. And that's why I switched to macs... from linux.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

SoftTalker 3y ago

It's still not accepted, by the way. If you meet someone and they don't start looking around the room for an escape route when they find out you are a "computer person" then they are probably a computer person too.

JPws_Prntr_Fngr 3y ago
The money part of tech is accepted. If you have enough of that, people will at least be courteous to your face, even if you're the stereotypical computer person.