3 ms·

Are you sure that developers mainly use Macs?

alephnerd 1y ago
Absolutely in US and Canada, and partially true in Israel, India, and China. The *nix and DevTooling community is better for MacOS compared to Windows, and a large portion of the software industry is iOS native apps, which requires a Mac to develop on.
- stevesimmons 1y ago
  WSL gives a pretty great Linux dev experience under Windows. As for "a large portion of the software industry is iOS native apps"... How about plugging in some assumptions here and then multiplying them together: 1. Mobile app share of total software development. 30% 2. iOS share versus Android: 30% 3. What % of iOS app dev is native apps? 40% My assumptions here give something like 4%. You should put whatever numbers you feel are right here, and I'm pretty sure it won't be close to "a large portion".
  - alephnerd 1y ago
    You can develop Android apps on a Mac, but you can't develop iOS apps without a Mac. Furthermore from an app market perspective, Apple's App Store saw around $140-150B in spending in 2025 versus $60-65B in spending on Google Play during the same time period [0]. As such, procurement teams coalesced around purchasing MacBooks because it opened the most doors. > WSL gives a pretty great Linux dev experience under Windows It's decent, but the a major blocker for enterprises adopting WSL is it's unsupported by most XDR tools, making it a no-go from a risk/audit perspective. I can't speak for WSL's developer experience, but the fact that I know L64+ employees at MS using "the Scottish laptop" is telling. [0] - https://backlinko.com/iphone-vs-android-statistics https://backlinko.com/iphone-vs-android-statistics
  - porridgeraisin 1y ago
    I don't know why iOS share vs Android is relevant? Any company that's making a mobile app will not ignore (a very affluent) 30% of the market. So all consumer apps _will_ have an iOS version. I don't know anything about mobile share of overall SW development.
hu3 1y ago
It's not true as can be evidenced in any developer anual survey like GitHub's, Jetbrains or Stack Overflow's. Most developers use Windows.

Absolutely in US and Canada, and partially true in Israel, India, and China. The *nix and DevTooling community is better for MacOS compared to Windows, and a large portion of the software industry is iOS native apps, which requires a Mac to develop on.

stevesimmons 1y ago
WSL gives a pretty great Linux dev experience under Windows. As for "a large portion of the software industry is iOS native apps"... How about plugging in some assumptions here and then multiplying them together: 1. Mobile app share of total software development. 30% 2. iOS share versus Android: 30% 3. What % of iOS app dev is native apps? 40% My assumptions here give something like 4%. You should put whatever numbers you feel are right here, and I'm pretty sure it won't be close to "a large portion".
- alephnerd 1y ago
  You can develop Android apps on a Mac, but you can't develop iOS apps without a Mac. Furthermore from an app market perspective, Apple's App Store saw around $140-150B in spending in 2025 versus $60-65B in spending on Google Play during the same time period [0]. As such, procurement teams coalesced around purchasing MacBooks because it opened the most doors. > WSL gives a pretty great Linux dev experience under Windows It's decent, but the a major blocker for enterprises adopting WSL is it's unsupported by most XDR tools, making it a no-go from a risk/audit perspective. I can't speak for WSL's developer experience, but the fact that I know L64+ employees at MS using "the Scottish laptop" is telling. [0] - https://backlinko.com/iphone-vs-android-statistics https://backlinko.com/iphone-vs-android-statistics
- porridgeraisin 1y ago
  I don't know why iOS share vs Android is relevant? Any company that's making a mobile app will not ignore (a very affluent) 30% of the market. So all consumer apps _will_ have an iOS version. I don't know anything about mobile share of overall SW development.

hu3 1y ago

It's not true as can be evidenced in any developer anual survey like GitHub's, Jetbrains or Stack Overflow's. Most developers use Windows.