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In product management parlance, this is low hanging fruit. Easy to implement and capitalizes on something the market is highly interested in at the moment. Gi

In product management parlance, this is low hanging fruit. Easy to implement and capitalizes on something the market is highly interested in at the moment. Given the concentration of developers who use Macs, and the accelerating interest in LLM-assisted coding, this makes a lot of sense to me. And while it may be true that AI is a craze, this is also a very real and useful feature grounded in a solid use case that has high impact on its users unlike some of the crazes of the past that were purely built on hype.

chme 3y ago
Are really that many developers using Macs? Maybe I am in a different bubble/country, but most professional developers and hobbyist hackers I know have either ThinkPads or Framework laptops running Linux or sometimes Windows, if they have to.
- haswell 3y ago
  33% according to the latest Stack Overflow developer survey. A healthy enough number to focus on that user base. I do think there are bubbles though. Macs are popular in SV, and there’s a very healthy portion of the developer community focused on this user base.
  - chme 3y ago
    This is a pretty useless poll when trying to compare MacOS, Windows and Linux usage, because they split Linux up into different distributions. Because adding all numbers up, you get >100%, I suppose multiple-choice were allowed, which doesn't even allow adding all Linux-like operating systems together. So not really a good Argument that MacOS is used more... https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023 https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023
    - haswell 3y ago
      If you look around the web, most attempts to answer this market share question land in roughly the same ballpark. The argument is not that macOS is used more. The argument is that macOS is prevalent enough that it makes sense to focus on it as a market.
Zekio 3y ago
"Given the concentration of developers who use Macs" fairly certain this is a silicon valley thing, the vast majority uses Windows for development and I wouldn't be surprised if macOS and linux are pretty even these days
- haswell 3y ago
  I think you may be right. This comment was based on 90% of the people I interact with using Macs, but those interactions are indeed mostly in SV. In that sense, the “concentration” is in the SV region, and may have been a bad choice of word by me when thinking about the broader ecosystem. With that said, macOS enjoys ~33% share in the latest Stack Overflow developer survey [0], and I think this illustrates the point somewhat. This is a healthy enough portion of the market to focus on, especially in the case of implementing low hanging fruit. - [0] https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023/#overview https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023/#overview

chme 3y ago

Are really that many developers using Macs? Maybe I am in a different bubble/country, but most professional developers and hobbyist hackers I know have either ThinkPads or Framework laptops running Linux or sometimes Windows, if they have to.

haswell 3y ago
33% according to the latest Stack Overflow developer survey. A healthy enough number to focus on that user base. I do think there are bubbles though. Macs are popular in SV, and there’s a very healthy portion of the developer community focused on this user base.
- chme 3y ago
  This is a pretty useless poll when trying to compare MacOS, Windows and Linux usage, because they split Linux up into different distributions. Because adding all numbers up, you get >100%, I suppose multiple-choice were allowed, which doesn't even allow adding all Linux-like operating systems together. So not really a good Argument that MacOS is used more... https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023 https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023
  - haswell 3y ago
    If you look around the web, most attempts to answer this market share question land in roughly the same ballpark. The argument is not that macOS is used more. The argument is that macOS is prevalent enough that it makes sense to focus on it as a market.

Zekio 3y ago

"Given the concentration of developers who use Macs" fairly certain this is a silicon valley thing, the vast majority uses Windows for development and I wouldn't be surprised if macOS and linux are pretty even these days

haswell 3y ago
I think you may be right. This comment was based on 90% of the people I interact with using Macs, but those interactions are indeed mostly in SV. In that sense, the “concentration” is in the SV region, and may have been a bad choice of word by me when thinking about the broader ecosystem. With that said, macOS enjoys ~33% share in the latest Stack Overflow developer survey [0], and I think this illustrates the point somewhat. This is a healthy enough portion of the market to focus on, especially in the case of implementing low hanging fruit. - [0] https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023/#overview https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023/#overview