At our work we give devs a choice of whatever hardware they want. Mostly that means Apple hardware, although some people use it to boot Linux VMs. We believe

At our work we give devs a choice of whatever hardware they want. Mostly that means Apple hardware, although some people use it to boot Linux VMs. We believe that if you're given the tools you want, you're able to work at your best. But having said that, there are plenty of instances where the one dude running Ubuntu can't get some thing working and it ends up eating up a couple of days of his time (and of course would happen vice-versa if the Apple guy was the only Apple guy in the office.) So I'd totally agree with the advice re "if you're going to be the only one"... Keep in mind though, if you go for the Apple hardware you're actually free to use whatever OS you want. You might just boot it straight into your favourite linux variant, but you'll still have the option to run OSX if need be. And honestly if you setup your toolkit properly OSX is pretty great, even for Linux users.