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My experience with traffic coming from Hacker News has been that the majority comes from OS X.

by Lockyy 12y ago

aeberbach 12y ago
I'm surprised, thought Linux of some kind would have been most popular.
- robzyb 12y ago
  I just bought a new laptop. A Macbook Air. Part of the reason was OS X over Linux. This is for two distinct reasons: a) Battery life. For the most part, shoehorning Linux onto a PC is going to negatively affect battery life. b) Despite being a bit of a "hacker", I have a day job and don't want to spend too much time tinkering with my OS. OS X is more polished than Linux and is less likely to go wrong. I'm guessing that while most HN'ers aren't in exactly the same situation as me, they have more important things to do (i.e. working on their ideas) rather than wrangle with Linux.
  - mbillie1 12y ago
    "Linux is only free if your time has no value"
- dkulchenko 12y ago
  @robzyb hit the nail on the head - a great many of us just want something that works, every day. At some point in my life I loved tinkering with my OS, jumping between distros weekly, etc. now I just want to get things done. I used desktop Linux for 10 years before jumping to OS X in 2011. I'm sure people will immediately chime in and say that Thinkpads work well with Ubuntu or that System76 does the job, and I'm sure it does, but the experience of running OS X on Apple hardware is simply unmatched.
  - seba_dos1 12y ago
    When I don't want to tinker with my Debian anymore, I just stop doing it and things work the way I left them. That's the main beauty of good Linux distros that keeps me so attached to them - I always can play with stuff, but I don't have to. And when I want to, it's much better choice than OS X for that.
  - enok 12y ago
    I'm a long time Linux desktop user, since the days of Debian Slink and Windowmaker, but I dig OS X. It's slick. I wish there was a desktop on Linux that could strike that balance between features, usability and stability. That being said, I'm also cheap. If Mac's were more competitively priced, I would probably own one, but paying that much over market value for what essentially is a "pretty" PC that can run OS X has always been an issue for me. I just chug along on my aging but sturdy Thinkpad with Linux. I think Apple could change the game if they decoupled OS X from the hardware. Who would pay for Window 8 when you could just install OS X instead?
    - oneeyedpigeon 12y ago
      Who would buy a Mac when you could just install OS X on a PC? (Note: I don't necessarily subscribe to this viewpoint, but I think Apple do, and have historically. And I speak as someone who was cheap enough to buy a Mac Mini and bring my own monitor - the only way I could justifiably afford OS X)
      - informatimago 12y ago
        Legally, you still would have to, yes.
      - enok 12y ago
        That's the thing, Apple fans will just keep buying Apple no matter what. Even if you could by a PC with OS X there would always be a demand for Apple hardware. If Apple sold OS X separately from Macs people would still buy Macs.
  - Rusky 12y ago
    This is probably just me, but the biggest reason I use Linux is the package manager and repositories (Arch's package manager and wiki are amazing). Anything other than that, Windows or OS X, feels like it's missing something and I have to work around it. People are saying they have to spend a lot of time configuring Linux but in my experience that's not the case (obviously once it's installed in the case of Arch, which for me is a worthwhile investment). I do admire the polish of OS X's desktop though.
    - renaudg 12y ago
      OS X has everything an end-user needs already (iLife apps are best of breed on any platform and come for free !), that's the beauty. For the rest there's the seamless App Store. Now for hackers, you already get a long way with the built-in BSD commands, but one word : http://brew.sh http://brew.sh
      - Rusky 12y ago
        Brew leads to the same kind of experience as MinGW on Windows. It's just not as good as the package managers on Linux.
  - danford 12y ago
    >something that works, every day. >the experience of running OS X on Apple hardware is simply unmatched. Eh. Seems a lot of people on HN believe this, but it's not always the case. Just a quick visit to discussion.apple.com will show all sorts of issues people have with the OS including bugs like http://www.cnet.com/news/some-lion-users-plagued-by-black-screen-bug/ http://www.cnet.com/news/some-lion-users-plagued-by-black-sc... which is a bug in the OS. Edit: just some things I noticed in the short time I used OS X: The gmail integration is buggy. I didn't get messages on time, and I have to either quit the app or take Mail offline and then online again before new mail will start streaming in. Sometime I couldn't get it to quit. The 'quicklook' thing seemed really slow, which seemed to be a problem a lot of users had. Multi-monitor support isn't that great. I had multiple windows on multiple desktops for some reason and it just felt weird. I had issues with audio stopping and not working again until I did a reboot. In some apps scrolling was really rough.
    - calciphus 12y ago
      Window management in OSX is easily my biggest complaint. Installing Spectacle (open source) at least gave me back the Windows shortcuts for half screen, full-screen, and next monitor. The full screen width menu system drives me nuts, as with a 27" monitor I have to go 3ft to the left to find whatever non-keystroked command I need. It feels at least 15 years behind to me, especially given their fondness for those big cinema displays. Apple seems to think I should unitask on a single monitor. That's not how I work, so it's not for me.
- dsr_ 12y ago
  If you want to buy the best laptop hardware available, and price is not much of a concern, you get a MacBook Pro. I hate the keyboard, but everything else is top quality. Once you've done that, you could install Linux or Windows or FreeBSD on it, but if you don't have an overwhelming requirement, you'll keep it on Mac OS. And if you're like most hackers, you have one work laptop and you carry it around everywhere, and it's your primary machine. Personally, I don't carry a laptop back and forth: I have a Linux desktop at the office, and a Linux desktop at home, and a Mac laptop for travel and moving around the house.
- slashdotaccount 12y ago
  http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/31714.html http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/31714.html
reedlaw 12y ago
I still can't understand why so many hackers/developers use OS X. Where I work doing web development, Linux machines account for less than 10% of the workstations, and the vast majority use OS X. When I tried OS X at one point I found it horrible. The most irritating thing was the keyboard which could not be mapped in the "standard" PC way (i.e. Ctrl Super Alt in the bottom left). I could get some programs to respect custom key bindings, but others would not. Besides that, there is no standard package manager for OS X and nearly all of the built-in libraries are terribly out-of-date. Worse yet from a security/privacy/philosophical viewpoint, OS X is proprietary software. We have no idea what risks or hidden back-doors exist inside. I've been using Linux for many years now and I'm still investing time daily sharpening my tools. It's an investment that continues to pay exponentially increasing rewards. Nearly all of the remote computing resources I use in my job are running Linux. That probably is true for most HN users. Is Linux really that much more difficult to use on the desktop? I find getting all my laptop hardware running smoothly is one of the easiest system administration tasks I face. And I only face that task once in a blue moon when I upgrade laptops.
- aeberbach 12y ago
  Yes, it is that much more difficult for people whose primary goal is doing stuff other than tweaking their computer. And as others have mentioned, nothing gets you more battery life than OS X on Apple hardware. Not sure how any of the various Linux package managers are more "standard" than brew on OS X...
  - reedlaw 12y ago
    "Doing stuff" for developers often includes installing and running packages such as databases, programming languages, editors, etc. On OS X, there is only an App Store built-in. You have to choose one of many package managers[1]. Each package may get installed in its own non-standard way. Linux distributions like Debian or Arch have standardized package managers which handle dependencies and updates much more smoothly than any OS X implementation I've come across. 1. http://www.onthelambda.com/2013/10/14/the-state-of-package-management-on-mac-os-x/ http://www.onthelambda.com/2013/10/14/the-state-of-package-m...

My experience with traffic coming from Hacker News has been that the majority comes from OS X.

by Lockyy 12y ago

My experience with traffic coming from Hacker News has been that the majority comes from OS X.

aeberbach 12y ago

I'm surprised, thought Linux of some kind would have been most popular.

robzyb 12y ago
I just bought a new laptop. A Macbook Air. Part of the reason was OS X over Linux. This is for two distinct reasons: a) Battery life. For the most part, shoehorning Linux onto a PC is going to negatively affect battery life. b) Despite being a bit of a "hacker", I have a day job and don't want to spend too much time tinkering with my OS. OS X is more polished than Linux and is less likely to go wrong. I'm guessing that while most HN'ers aren't in exactly the same situation as me, they have more important things to do (i.e. working on their ideas) rather than wrangle with Linux.
- mbillie1 12y ago
  "Linux is only free if your time has no value"
dkulchenko 12y ago
@robzyb hit the nail on the head - a great many of us just want something that works, every day. At some point in my life I loved tinkering with my OS, jumping between distros weekly, etc. now I just want to get things done. I used desktop Linux for 10 years before jumping to OS X in 2011. I'm sure people will immediately chime in and say that Thinkpads work well with Ubuntu or that System76 does the job, and I'm sure it does, but the experience of running OS X on Apple hardware is simply unmatched.
- seba_dos1 12y ago
  When I don't want to tinker with my Debian anymore, I just stop doing it and things work the way I left them. That's the main beauty of good Linux distros that keeps me so attached to them - I always can play with stuff, but I don't have to. And when I want to, it's much better choice than OS X for that.
- enok 12y ago
  I'm a long time Linux desktop user, since the days of Debian Slink and Windowmaker, but I dig OS X. It's slick. I wish there was a desktop on Linux that could strike that balance between features, usability and stability. That being said, I'm also cheap. If Mac's were more competitively priced, I would probably own one, but paying that much over market value for what essentially is a "pretty" PC that can run OS X has always been an issue for me. I just chug along on my aging but sturdy Thinkpad with Linux. I think Apple could change the game if they decoupled OS X from the hardware. Who would pay for Window 8 when you could just install OS X instead?
  - oneeyedpigeon 12y ago
    Who would buy a Mac when you could just install OS X on a PC? (Note: I don't necessarily subscribe to this viewpoint, but I think Apple do, and have historically. And I speak as someone who was cheap enough to buy a Mac Mini and bring my own monitor - the only way I could justifiably afford OS X)
    - informatimago 12y ago
      Legally, you still would have to, yes.
    - enok 12y ago
      That's the thing, Apple fans will just keep buying Apple no matter what. Even if you could by a PC with OS X there would always be a demand for Apple hardware. If Apple sold OS X separately from Macs people would still buy Macs.
- Rusky 12y ago
  This is probably just me, but the biggest reason I use Linux is the package manager and repositories (Arch's package manager and wiki are amazing). Anything other than that, Windows or OS X, feels like it's missing something and I have to work around it. People are saying they have to spend a lot of time configuring Linux but in my experience that's not the case (obviously once it's installed in the case of Arch, which for me is a worthwhile investment). I do admire the polish of OS X's desktop though.
  - renaudg 12y ago
    OS X has everything an end-user needs already (iLife apps are best of breed on any platform and come for free !), that's the beauty. For the rest there's the seamless App Store. Now for hackers, you already get a long way with the built-in BSD commands, but one word : http://brew.sh http://brew.sh
    - Rusky 12y ago
      Brew leads to the same kind of experience as MinGW on Windows. It's just not as good as the package managers on Linux.
- danford 12y ago
  >something that works, every day. >the experience of running OS X on Apple hardware is simply unmatched. Eh. Seems a lot of people on HN believe this, but it's not always the case. Just a quick visit to discussion.apple.com will show all sorts of issues people have with the OS including bugs like http://www.cnet.com/news/some-lion-users-plagued-by-black-screen-bug/ http://www.cnet.com/news/some-lion-users-plagued-by-black-sc... which is a bug in the OS. Edit: just some things I noticed in the short time I used OS X: The gmail integration is buggy. I didn't get messages on time, and I have to either quit the app or take Mail offline and then online again before new mail will start streaming in. Sometime I couldn't get it to quit. The 'quicklook' thing seemed really slow, which seemed to be a problem a lot of users had. Multi-monitor support isn't that great. I had multiple windows on multiple desktops for some reason and it just felt weird. I had issues with audio stopping and not working again until I did a reboot. In some apps scrolling was really rough.
  - calciphus 12y ago
    Window management in OSX is easily my biggest complaint. Installing Spectacle (open source) at least gave me back the Windows shortcuts for half screen, full-screen, and next monitor. The full screen width menu system drives me nuts, as with a 27" monitor I have to go 3ft to the left to find whatever non-keystroked command I need. It feels at least 15 years behind to me, especially given their fondness for those big cinema displays. Apple seems to think I should unitask on a single monitor. That's not how I work, so it's not for me.
dsr_ 12y ago
If you want to buy the best laptop hardware available, and price is not much of a concern, you get a MacBook Pro. I hate the keyboard, but everything else is top quality. Once you've done that, you could install Linux or Windows or FreeBSD on it, but if you don't have an overwhelming requirement, you'll keep it on Mac OS. And if you're like most hackers, you have one work laptop and you carry it around everywhere, and it's your primary machine. Personally, I don't carry a laptop back and forth: I have a Linux desktop at the office, and a Linux desktop at home, and a Mac laptop for travel and moving around the house.
slashdotaccount 12y ago
http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/31714.html http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/31714.html

reedlaw 12y ago

I still can't understand why so many hackers/developers use OS X. Where I work doing web development, Linux machines account for less than 10% of the workstations, and the vast majority use OS X. When I tried OS X at one point I found it horrible. The most irritating thing was the keyboard which could not be mapped in the "standard" PC way (i.e. Ctrl Super Alt in the bottom left). I could get some programs to respect custom key bindings, but others would not. Besides that, there is no standard package manager for OS X and nearly all of the built-in libraries are terribly out-of-date. Worse yet from a security/privacy/philosophical viewpoint, OS X is proprietary software. We have no idea what risks or hidden back-doors exist inside. I've been using Linux for many years now and I'm still investing time daily sharpening my tools. It's an investment that continues to pay exponentially increasing rewards. Nearly all of the remote computing resources I use in my job are running Linux. That probably is true for most HN users. Is Linux really that much more difficult to use on the desktop? I find getting all my laptop hardware running smoothly is one of the easiest system administration tasks I face. And I only face that task once in a blue moon when I upgrade laptops.

aeberbach 12y ago
Yes, it is that much more difficult for people whose primary goal is doing stuff other than tweaking their computer. And as others have mentioned, nothing gets you more battery life than OS X on Apple hardware. Not sure how any of the various Linux package managers are more "standard" than brew on OS X...
- reedlaw 12y ago
  "Doing stuff" for developers often includes installing and running packages such as databases, programming languages, editors, etc. On OS X, there is only an App Store built-in. You have to choose one of many package managers[1]. Each package may get installed in its own non-standard way. Linux distributions like Debian or Arch have standardized package managers which handle dependencies and updates much more smoothly than any OS X implementation I've come across. 1. http://www.onthelambda.com/2013/10/14/the-state-of-package-management-on-mac-os-x/ http://www.onthelambda.com/2013/10/14/the-state-of-package-m...