Five Reasons Why Designers Developers are Switching to Mac
Designers and developers have many choices to make when it comes to getting work done, from what frameworks, languages, and image editing software to use, to what platform to run. The latter is an oft debated and controversial topic and the mere mention of it risks setting off flame wars of epic proportions, so in the interest of sanity, we’ll try to avoid any direct comparisons to other operating systems.
It’s no secret that there has been a growing trend in recent years toward developers, especially of the web variety, choosing a Mac as their main dev machine. In this two-part series, we will examine some of the reasons behind this trend, look at some of the pitfalls of switching to the Mac, and go over the must-have software and configurations every switcher should be aware of.
First Reason for Switching: Mac OS X
You may have noticed the rise in the number of colleagues and fellow developers who are choosing a Mac as their next computer. If you haven’t, you’re probably either working for Microsoft or you have an MBA. So why is it so compelling?
If you were to ask a die-hard Windows user why he or she thinks people like Macs, they would almost invariably say the reasons are purely about aesthetics. If you were to ask most web developers why they have switched to a mac, however, the refrain would be loud and unanimous: OSX. To be fair to Windows, in terms of raw capability the two offerings differ very little; with enough elbow grease, both systems can be configured in pretty much any way its users wish.
When pressured to explain why they prefer OSX, Mac users often rest on qualifiable and subjective arguments such as “it feels intuitive” or “I enjoy using it more” or even “I can’t explain why I like it better, I just do.” The Windows user, when presented with these arguments, usually rolls his or her eyes and continues on their way. It isn’t until someone truly makes up their own mind to give OSX an honest chance that they can understand what all the fuss is about.
A Few Quantifiable Benefits of OS X include:
1. Open Source Friendly
As a web developer, if there’s one skill you invariably have to develop, it’s the use of a *NIX terminal. Luckily, because OSX is built on top of UNIX, the terminal is ready and waiting. Every Apple ships with a wide variety of open source programming tools and frameworks built in such as PHP, Apache, and Ruby on Rails. Linux users who have grown tired of dealing with hardware issues, especially on laptops, often choose a Mac as their portable solution because it is UNIX based.
It means that the entire world of open source software out there is pretty much guaranteed to run without much hassle. In a world where open source software is a way of life, web developers need a friendly environment to operate in.
2. Quartz Extreme
Quartz is the OpenGL powered windowing system used by OSX. Quartz extreme utilizes the graphics card exclusively, which means no processor cycles are taxed. This allows for a variety of useful features such as Exposé, which dynamically resizes every window on the screen giving you a bird’s eye view of your entire workspace.
Spaces, a feature introduced in OSX 10.5 (Leopard) takes the bird’s eye view a step further by providing a view of multiple desktops. To further illustrate the point, you can activate Exposé inside Spaces and drag these windows from desktop to desktop – any videos that are playing will continue to play and the windows will dynamically resize to accommodate the extra window. Once you get used to this sort of thing, you wonder how you ever lived without it.
3. Core Animation
Core animation provides a way for developers to produce animated user interfaces via an implicit animation model as well as an ‘explicit’ model. In other words, it means some very flashy and useful features are going to start showing up in OS X applications much like the animated menu help system shown in the graphic above. Prodiving developers with a toolset to implement these types of animated effects means software will become more intuitive.
4. Built-in Tools
There are so many useful tools that are built in to the Mac that come in handy for designers and developers that it’s easy to see OSX was built with developers and creative professionals in mind. Take the built-in screen capturing utility “Grab” for OSX, which has a wide variety of options, from selecting down to the pixel the area you want to screenshot, to providing window captures complete with the window frame, to outputting directly to the desktop as a .PNG file.
In fact, some tools were created specifically for designers because Apple has long catered to the creative professional market (indeed, it sustained Apple during their darkest times). More built in tools include:
- The Digital Color Meter – a tool that allows you to grab the color value of any pixel on your screen.
- Console – Useful for viewing very large log files
- Terminal – Mentioned above, complete with many OSS tools like VIM
- XCode Tools – The Apple development IDE
- Zoom – easy-as-pie down-to-the-pixel zooming
- Safari Debug Mode – Similar to Firebug for Firefox
- Time Machine – dead simple automated backups
5. Unified User Interface
As any student of design knows, consistency is one of the most important principles to adhere to, and it is clear the OSX UI was designed with this in mind. Because of the strict user interface guidelines provided by the Apple software development tools, applications and utilities on a Mac feel like they are all part of the same system.
The menu bar, which for some switchers can be a difficult feature to get used to, adheres to this unification by standardizing the location and layout of the menu options. Drag-and-drop functionality is ubiquitous. Being able to do things like drag an image off your web browser directly into your Photoshop project are a boon to productivity. If it feels as though you should be able to drag-and-drop something, you probably can.
6. Security
Now before you crack your knuckles and start composing your diatribe about why Macs aren’t any more secure than PCs, let me point out a trite but undebatable fact: there’s simply less malware out there for Macs than PCs – a LOT less (partly because Unix is inherently more secure than Windows and partly because Windows is just more wide-spread and Mac users aren’t targeted that often – read more in the article Is The Mac Really More Secure Than Windows?). If you are on a Mac, at least for the next few more years, you can pretty much rest assured your days of worrying about virus and spyware scans are a thing of the past.
7. Textmate, Growl, Quicksilver, and more
There is no shortage of text editors available to developers, but one that seems to keep coming up in recommendation after recommendation is Textmate, the lightweight GUI text editor for OSX. The project management drawer makes it easy to keep track of folders, which for monolithic MVC frameworks like Ruby on Rails and CakePHP is a godsend.
Nested scopes allow users to create their own syntax highlighting which is important in the ever changing world of web development. To speed up the development process, one can utilize “snippets” or pieces of reusable code that can be inserted with a few key strokes. While there aren’t any features that are revolutionary, they are combined in a way that makes for a very unobtrusive coding experience that seems very in tune with the overall feel of a Mac.
In addition to Textmate, there is a whole host of other beloved applications that seem to have been created by people who truly understand and want to emulate the Mac experience, like the quick-launch solution Quicksilver, the system notifications app Growl, and the chat client Adium. These are pieces of software of a caliber that is sometimes difficult to find on Windows. It seems that quality, not quantity, is the best way to describe the Mac software library.
8. Quick Look
OS X not only has icons that display an actual miniature version of the file they are representing, but it’s possible to view the contents of the file in their full glory without having to launch the program they are associated with simply by hitting the space bar. Furthermore, if a group of icons are highlighted, they can be expanded into a gallery view.
9. Virtualization
OSX is the only OS you can get that can virtualize all three major operating systems out of the box. This is a must have for checking browser compatibility. To make life even easier, you can do it right from within OSX using programs like Parallels, Virtualbox, and VMWare Fusion. And if you think web browsers render websites exactly the same regardless of the operating system they’re running on you are sorely mistaken.
Second Reason for Switching: Intel Inside
When Apple made the switch to Intel chips, it upset a lot of Mac fans out there who liked the fact that Apple wasn’t the same as any other X86 box on the market. With the rise in mobile computing, however, Apple was forced to face the fact that the PowerPC wasn’t offering as good a solution as Intel.
They also knew that by offering a system that could run Windows in addition to OS X they would put to rest any compatibility arguments. It turned out to be a good strategical move, and droves of would-be switchers were finally able to take the plunge without being forced to give up their entire libraries of Windows-based software.
OSX can virtualize all three major operating systems out of the box. This is a must have for checking browser compatibility. To make life even easier, you can do it right from within OSX using programs like Parallels, Virtualbox, and VMWare Fusion. And if you think web browsers render websites exactly the same regardless of the operating system they’re running on you are sorely mistaken.
Third Reason for Switching: Less Hassle
Opinionated Software
Some people like hassle. In fact, developers typically love getting their hands dirty customizing, maintaining, and tweaking their operating systems. If you fall under this category, Linux is probably your best fit, followed by Windows. OS X is more opinionated than other platforms. It’s more difficult to customize its look and feel, there’s no easy way to get it to run on anything but Apple hardware, and OS X can be very particular about the way certain things are done.
Opionated software, however, can have its benefits. While it may be more difficult to customize and hack every last aspect of your OS, sometimes it can be nice to have a system where a good many of these choices have already been made for you. Because Apple provides a complete solution, from the operating system to the hardware to a lot of the software that’s bundled in, they have an easier go of making sure the experience is seemless and well tested. Opinionated software can be a very polarizing concept, however.
Take Ruby on Rails for instance, a web development framework where many decisions are made for the developer based on the core contributors’ opinions about best practices. Rails has a preferred javascript framework, database ORM, templating system, and more. You can choose other configurations if you want to, but it shines brightest when you do things the “Rails Way.”
You spend less time customizing and more time actually developing. This hands-off approach can be a major turn off for some developers, but for others it removes a lot of the hassle and reinventing of the wheel. The high rate of Mac ownership among Rails developers could be directly attributed to the analogous nature of Apple and Rails. The analogy is made more apt by any number of PHP vs Ruby on Rails flame wars you can find out there.
Support
Because Apple provides the whole solution, they are obligated to provide support for the whole solution as well. Most developers are perfectly willing to trouble shoot their own computers, but when deadlines need to be met it can be nice knowing that you can offload some of that hassle to people who already know the system inside and out.
Apple has impressive customer service specifically because they support the entire system, rather than just one aspect of the system. It’s also handy to be able to take your machine into an actual brick-and-mortar store rather than deal with outsourced phone support.
Let’s face it, when it comes to a non-technical spouse or family member, we can expect to do a lot of troubleshooting. Just like its nice not to have to worry about troubleshooting your own computer, it’s even nicer not to have to worry as much about other people’s computers. It is reasonable to assume that because Macs typically have less security issues (at least for now), there’s less time spent trying to explain how to avoid malware and actually removing it.
Fourth Reason for Switching: Microsoft
If you like it or not: a big reason why developers have been flocking to Apple is in part due to the fact that it isn’t the big M. When personal computing was still in its infancy, the reverse was true. Microsoft understood that it was the developers (developers developers) that would make their OS successful while Apple’s closed model ended up being a huge mistake.
Once Microsoft started dominating the marketplace, however, the pungent stench of monopoly sparked the open source movement, and more and more developers were starting to wonder if there were better options out there.
Linux is of course the golden child of the open source movement, but despite the efforts of Ubuntu it is still a ways off in terms of being a turnkey solution for most people. Enter Apple: a Unix based system that despite being every bit as closed as Microsoft, is in large part the antithesis of Microsoft.
Microsoft software has the unfortunate feeling of having been designed by committee. Features are packed in with little regard to their usefulness, and aesthetics are seemingly an afterthought. When Vista first launched, the Aero user interface was so flashy it required higher end machines to even run it, somewhat defeating the argument Microsoft was making about the affordability of PCs. OSX was designed to run as well on the most expensive Mac Pro as it would an eight year old Powerbook because they control the solution from hardware to software.
Unfortunately, Windows doesn’t come bundled with PHP, Rails, or any other open-source web development frameworks or languages any time soon. More and more of what we do is in the cloud these days anyways and it is almost starting to feel quaint when you come across new software that runs solely as a desktop client. Microsoft has painted themselves into a corner – they rely on closed formats and standards in a world where open source software, open formats, and open standards are king.
Fifth Reason For Switching: Design and Minimalism
Good design gets out of the way. It doesn’t demand to be seen or appreciated. Most of all, good design is something you don’t even notice at first. Bang & Olufsen understands this, and Apple understands this. As of this writing, there are only two styles of Apple notebook: silver and white, and white is only available in the cheapest configuration. Apple notebooks are free of stickers, screws, vents, buttons, switches, and graphics.
What this leaves is a system with little to look at other than the screen in front of you, which is as it should be. The benefit of the entire product development cycle being done under one house is that Apple creates a system that truly feels as though it was created by one person.
At the heart of Apple’s design philosophy is the concept of minimalism. It is a concept that has worked well for companies such as Google. We all remember the gratuitous placement of links and ads on most search engines before Google came around with its simple search bar. After all, it was the search that was the important part, not the content the provider was hoping we would want. Apple figures if not including a feature angers 1% of their consumer base but makes things easier for the other 99% it’s probably worth doing.
Take, for instance, the lack of a second mouse buttom. It may seem like a glaring omission on Apple’s part, but it has had some unintended consequences: because developers can’t simple throw commands into a bloated right-click menu they are forced to think more about the one-click usability of their applications.
Minimalist design has its downsides too, however. Macs lack card readers, often have 2-3 less USB ports than even low end machines, and are typically difficult to customize. For those of you who value a product that gives you many choices, Apple is going to fall short. It is often pointed out that upgrading a Mac is easy: “Just throw it away and buy a new one.”
Humor aside, this isn’t too far from the truth but the good news is that Macs hold their value better than any computer on the market. Instead of throwing it away, sell it on Ebay for healthy head-start on a new machine.
Mac’s Pitfalls
It’s not all sunshine and rainbows for everyone who switches to a Mac. There are the inevitable bumps in the road that everyone experiences when making a major platform change, and for some people these bumps are outright road blocks. Here’s what to be aware of:
1. Control is now Command
Breaking the habit of using control as the main modifier key on your system can take a bit of time and some people never quite get the hang of it. Old habits die hard and muscle memory dies harder. This is a problem that can be solved by re-mapping command to the control key, but when you are using a system that assumes a certain configuration you may run into confusion later on.
2. No Second Mouse Button
Unless you use an external mouse with your Apple laptop you will have to get used to the lack of a second mouse button. The truth is there is no optimal number of mouse buttons. Luckily, you can enable right-clicking in a number of ways on a mac, such as tapping the track pad with two fingers simultaneously or holding ctrl when clicking.
3. No Maximizing of Windows
This is actually starting to become less true as time goes on as ex-Windows users who develop software for the Mac include the feature (for instance, maximize on firefox for the Mac works as expected). But the typical maximize you are used to in Windows cannot be found on the Mac, and for some this can be extremely frustrating. In fact, the whole “stop-light” window controls can at times feel stale and unintuitive.
4. Lack of an “affordable” Mac
Perhaps the most popular sticking point of non-Mac users, price is always at the heart of the debate. Under $1200 or so, there is no question that byte for byte, ghz for ghz, you can get a better raw value by avoiding Apple. Apple has chosen not to enter the sub $1000 PC not because it doesn’t want to grow sales, but because it wants to avoid the dogfight that Sony, HP, and other brands are in for the lower end market.
Profit margins are razor thin in that range, after all. Apple is certainly catering to the botique style consumer. If you are pinching pennies these days the price issue may just be the one pitfall you can’t bring yourself to overcome.
5. Much Smaller Software Library
While this is somewhat mediated by the fact that you can virtualize Windows on a Mac, it is a far cry from being able to run your favorite programs natively on your system. If you are using software on a regular basis that only runs in the Windows environment, you may want to think hard about whether moving to a Mac is worth the trouble.
6. You Can’t Build a Mac (Easily)
Part of the success of Windows was the fact that they licensed it to run on any PC, anywhere. Apple has been closed since the word go, save a brief period where they allowed Mac clones to exist in what turned out to be a devastatingly bad idea. If you’re the type who loves building your own PC from scratch, a Mac is not going to offer much for you.
In general, even the most jaded Windows user is inevitably going to miss at least a few features or aspects of Windows during their switch to a Mac. The best policy to follow is to keep an open mind during the learning process. Try doing things “the Mac way” for a week and keep your skepticism to a minimum.
Above all, ask questions before you make assumptions. There’s a fervent Apple community out there (in case you haven’t noticed) that have solutions for every issue you find, thanks in part to the fact that most of them are switchers themselves. Remember, if you’re having the issue, chances are good some other switcher experienced it before you and created or found a solution.
Conclusion
While not the right solution for everyone, it’s clear that many people are switching to a Mac these days for a good many reasons. Nevertheless, Macs are expensive and require user’s patience and willingness to adapt his or her behavior to a compltely different interface. Mac is certainly not an option for every user, but it is definitely an option worth considering – particularly for designers or developers.
Join us in Part 2 of this series where we examine some of the must have software, configurations, and tricks that every new Mac user should know about. Please feel free to subscribe to our RSS-feed 
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Matt
May 24th, 2009 5:31 pmI’ve used both Mac and Windows, and I must say I feel more at home with Windows. Though I’m not a Mac hater.
I’ve heard the only real solid argument against Windows for Designers (away from all this “I prefer…” and subjective choices) is that Mac OS X handles fonts better, which is why printing presses use them etc. I’ve heard that they won’t accept files sent to them from a PC, is this true?
Marc Ambrose
May 24th, 2009 6:30 pmWell, I believe this article has caused once again the infamous Mac Vs. PC turmoil it usually does. I’m starting to think that you guys write these articles just to get more comments.
I worked with Windows for 3 years, learning Photoshop, Flash. Then, one faithful day my mother came home with an iMac. At first I was mystified by the thing. Why did the windows not maximize properly, where the hell was the file bar, where did my minimized window go?
After a few days of playing around with it, I was addicted to that thing.
It runs a whole lot smoother than Vista, looks better and has a lot more productive features, particularly Expose and Spaces.
Bash on me, PC haters. Go go go!
g mar
August 3rd, 2012 1:53 pm@Marc Ambrose: your mum must be loved you so much. My mum never bring me an imac untill today. :p
Btw, I use a hackintosh back home on my notebook. Actually that first came with vista, but it was so slow (even though I’d put 2 GB or RAM on it). So I switched to xp pro.
One day lat year, my mind flashed back to 1996-1998, the time when I first read about apple cloning, and then I never stop dreaming getting myself an apple(mac) since then. But because I can’t afford (till now), I installed a hackintosh side to side with xp.
After 2-3 days surfing here and there, snow leopard finally runs on my nb. Although I have to wait for 2 minutes each time I boot this hackintosh – due to the intel’s graphic chipset driver problem – & I cannot get a higher resolution, I must admit that there is something in this os x that attracts me more than m$’s to me. The fact that I cannot install certain application (maybe because it’s a cracked version of os x – I won’t complaint) , I really enjoy using it and never switch to windows again. So I decided that one day – next year or sooner – I will get myself a mac. I just can’t stand any longer waiting for my mum presents me an Imac (just kidding with this last line). That’s all.
Juliany
May 25th, 2009 12:43 pmZitat from:
8. Dieter Mueller (April 26th, 2009, 2:30 pm)
“How lame.
I am a freelancer since 1989 – using both Macs & PC. Maybe five but certainly ten years ago there were REAL reasons to use a Mac: better fonts, better applications, better hardware (how that has changed – Macs are basically Intel clones today and Apple’s production standards have slipped in some products) more stable production environment. Today Photoshop is Photoshop (or any other important design tool) – no matter on which box you run it on.
A good designer delivers good work NO MATTER which tool he uses – even when it’s only pen and paper. Stop that techno & brand fetishism – do some good work instead.”
now its me:
Really lame, its just about the image. Apple has a nice clean Design. For shure! You love it as an Designer or developer or whatever. But i use windows at home. Its more flexible and developers can do every job on this platform. i think the macDesign is really good and the biggest point why you love it. My windows pc is build up from single parts by my own i installed an customized windows and that feels really personal to me. Why do you say my mac? he looks the same like all the other once :-) Why should i pay alot of money for a brandname. I dont trust both of them but apple looks more like the big company wich closes the doors for other companys. i hate ipods! :-D i hate the i muhahaha and the cake is a lie!!! So for every one a piece of cake!
Matt
May 25th, 2009 8:41 pmJuliany, do you have problems sending files from a PC to offeset printers and printing presses etc? Because it is what I fear, sure you are paying more for a Mac because they are built better, but a large some of that price is just the brand, hence you are paying for the brand name.
A friend of mine at uni bought one, $4000 AUS, and she’ll be paying it off for the next 2 years! It’s too much money. Instead of buying a Mac I upgraded my computer to 3.12Ghz Intel Core Duo, 4 GB RAM (3 actually, until Windows 7 comes out and can recognize more than XP) and bought a Wacom Cintiq 12WX Graphics Tablet, still for much cheaper than a decent Mac Book Pro.
I still have to buy a laptop at the end of the year, and while I’ve recently found some laptops from Dell that look great too and at half the price. Tt the back of my mind I’m wondering if not getting a Mac is a smart decision. How many problems will I encounter in the future using a PC (like fonts especially) or is it basically designer fetishism?
I really believe a designer will produce better work with what he is comfortable with. Heck, traditional pen and paper designers are still out there and produce fantastic work that could beat digital based stuff.
nita
June 2nd, 2009 6:44 amI recently made the switch – sorta. I have a MacPro and run mac os, vista, and linux on separate hard drives. Currently I switch between the tools depending on what I am doing. I design in Mac because photoshop and illustrator are simply faster especially when I am doing billboard graphics. However, I code in windows. I prefer my current set of tools and they aren’t available in Mac. Linux is my playground :)
Kim
June 3rd, 2009 10:46 amI feel like I’m the only person who dislikes the interface with Macs. I strongly dislike the one-button mouse (especially years ago when the mouse was perfectly circular), the GUI, and the location of various aspects of the system. I don’t find them intuitive at all! I do like the operating system base, but I’ve done web development/design on Windows machines for years and even after almost a year of using a Mac at work/at school, I still won’t make the change.
I’m of the same opinion as a lot of the responders that Mac is the “hip” and “trendy” thing to do. At my college a lot of our programmers call it “trendy garbage”. Not worth the price for the small benefit.
I’m also a gamer and most games are not compatible with Macs, unfortunately. Further fueling the fire for me NOT to get one.
Jay
June 4th, 2009 9:48 amI don’t see your point of claiming Mac’s security. The number of exposed (publicly known) bugs does not represent how many bugs are actually inside the OS. It might be simply because Windows (for example) has a larger user base and received more attention on its security, thus more bugs are found. There have had been projects like the Month of Apple Bugs, Month of Kernel Bugs that reveals a lot of bugs in a month. All I am saying is you need statistical references to support your reasoning unless you are an expert of this particular domain.
keith
June 4th, 2009 4:29 pmAh, the PC vs. Mac debate.
I have both. I don’t think I’ll ever buy an Apple desktop, and I don’t think I’ll ever buy a Windows-based notebook. Apple knows how to make good notebook machines – well-designed cases, useful function buttons and decent aesthetics. But the standards are slipping a lot – what the hell is up with this glossy obsession. I can see more of my face than I can the screen, unless I start burning my eyes with the ridiculous backlight.
For me, the Mac OS (7..8,9,X) has always been a long way behind windows in terms of pure utilitarian usability. With the one exception of the Expose task switcher – that’s been a godsend on my portable use. But Expose isn’t anywhere near perfect. It’s always been a lot slower than Windows, the features you list up there are largely useless to me, or superficial. OSX doesn’t have a unified UI and you know it. Quartz Extreme isn’t a big deal – Vista/Win7 have the same class of compositing UI engine – and you really don’t gain much other than eye candy (which, coincidentally, slows one down). Security is a non-issue – Mac OS has issues, Windows has issues, and neither is more or less open-source friendly than the other.
When it comes to third party apps, if you’re a home or hobby user, Apple’s got your back – TextMate is neat, Growl is great, and Adium is smooth as butter. But for bigger apps, Windows is many years ahead. The Adobe Creative Suite runs better on Windows – and you can downgrade to CS1 or 2 for some apps if you’re sick of Adobe’s UI & performance bullshit. Try that on an Intel Mac – yeah, didn’t think so. Java apps run better on windows. IDEs on Mac OS X are terrible compared to their windows counterparts. Even multiplatform Java-based IDEs like Eclipse and NetBeans just work a lot better on Windows (thanks to Java on OSX…).
Really though, the biggest motivating factor for me right now is the fact that on the desktop, I can get almost twice the performance for half the price, and I’m not locked down to Apple’s hardware, so a year later I double my performance again for a quarter the price of a new mac. Notebooks are different – you’re locked in either way, and Apple makes a superior machine – or at least, they used to – I’m not so sure anymore.
Matt
June 4th, 2009 6:34 pmKim, you’re not the only one who feels that way. I hate the mouse (I mean, it feels nice in your hand but the lack of the right click is frustrating, meaning you have to always have your left hand at the Control button unless you activate the second click which isn’t always 100% accurate. Not to mention those side buttons that get clicked accidentally at least once every hour.)
I really like the look of OSX but hate all the windows piled up on each other and it gets messy. I still love Windows and can’t wait for 7 to be released so we can finally have some eye candy of our own.
I agree they make some sexy notebooks, and I’d expect to pay a little more for the sturdy build, but I just can’t see the justice in an extra $1000 AUS for something I can get in another laptop. Everybody at my uni is buying macs because the lecturers are leading them to believe it’s 100% neccessary, and these kids are only getting it because they like using the OSX and they want in on the Mac craze so they ‘feel’ like a designer. I personally like the look of the Mac laptops but won’t buy one because I cannot justify spending $4000 AUS for a decent Macbook Pro.
I’m gonna do a flip and buy a Dell laptop cause I still can’t get used to OSX and hate the idea of it all just being a craze. I like the look of Dell laptops, as they seem to be catching up (slowly) to Macbook’s aesthetics and I can get a better one for almost half the price. Though I wish laptop manufacturers would stop making their laptops glossy, as it just looks like a smudgy mess after a while.
But yeah, Kim, it does seem like just the “craze” for designers, making you feel like you’re not a designer unless you have a Mac. But I must say this, it’s us who are the designers, not the machines. ;) Stay strong, fight the current.
g mar
August 3rd, 2012 2:14 pm@Matt: uhmmm…I use an 8$ logitech mouse on my hackintosh. It has 2 buttons on it and runs well as it does on xp.
Jason
June 5th, 2009 11:42 amI’d like to offer a few additional points that I feel the article missed on.
1. The mouse: I use a regular Logitech mouse and it works just fine. I left/right click just like on my Windows machines. There is no difference. The apple mouse my Macs came with had the single click thing, but you don’t have to use them. And I’d ask, why would anyone anyway?
Don’t know why people keep talking about one-button mouses.
2. About the price point. I have a Dual G5 w/4 gigs ram I bought in 2008 for $700 (in fact, I bought a 2nd one too). It’s an old system of course, yet I do all my Adobe CS 3 work on it, edit videos, produce audio via GarageBand and more—all without issue. I’ve even played WoW (thankfully, I’ve broke that addiction). Unlike with PCs, you really don’t need to upgrade Macs that often.
Personally, I prefer Macs, but have both. Before OS X, Macs weren’t even on my radar, but since then it’s been heavenly. :)
BTW, I’m also a professional writer/editor and switched from Word to Pages. It’s much, much better overall. That program has really come along. Pages 09 is a dream–from writing/editing books to creating newsletters.
However, debates on which is better is a pointless waste of time.
Use the system you feel comfortable with and go with that.
Hanna
June 10th, 2009 8:44 pmwindows-like maximize can be enabled on a mac with the free app RightZoom =awesome
streetleveltech
June 11th, 2009 3:45 amOne problem I have with this, and so many other “Macs-are-better-than-PCs” articles is that the writers can’t seem to distinguish between the operating system and the software that the manufacturer bundles with the operating system. The “built-ins” are not the operating system. They should more accurately be described as “add-ons.”
MAttL
June 11th, 2009 4:10 amAre you correct in stating “OSX is the only OS you can get that can virtualize all three major operating systems out of the box.”?
My understanding is that OSX does not virtualize operating systems out of the box, you have to install software to do it. Parallels and VMWare fusion are commercial products, although Virtualbox is a free download, nontheless they require downloading and installing – this is not really considered to be out of the box in techy circles.
MIcrosoft and Linux based operating systems can both do this with freely downloadable software so I fail to understand why you say OSX is the ONLY OS that can do this?
If you mean Bootcamp then this is not really virtualization since it is dual booting the system, again this is not new or exclusive to OSX since you can dual boot any system to run operating systems compatible with the hardware.
So all in all I really don’t see why this is an advantage over other operating systems since the process of virtualizing a different operating system is essentially the same on all (I’ve done this on Windows, OSX and Ubuntu).
Other that this I like the artcle and I’m enjoying my recent mac conversion!
mallchin
June 11th, 2009 6:44 amAn article that lists five reasons why WEB DEVELOPERS are switching to Mac ought to pertain to developing websites. Simply stating the core animation is better in OS X than Windows is not a good reason to switch!
Here, I’ll give you three good reasons to get you started:
1) Native POSIX compliant filesystem
2) Native GNU userland tools, i.e. SSH, rsync and the like
3) Ability to run Apache, MySQL and PHP locally
brett
August 7th, 2012 9:20 amI do heavy web development every day for a living. Personally, I have switched back and forth mac to pc a bunch of times. I started on mac, with an LCIII. Ancient thing. Then went up to a beige G3. OS8/9 was such a horrific shitshow that crashed constantly and always had extension conflicts when you installed something new – believe it or not, I actually bought a professional program that was made specifically to ease the process of resolving extension conflicts LOL!!! It would systematically disable certain extensions then restart the computer, and you would tell it if you still have the issue. Absolutely arcane. Anyways when I got into gaming I built a pentium 4 rig and had that for about 5 years. I liked it, but then for college I got a macbook pro and fell in love again. After I started developing professionally, I officially moved to windows 7 and stand by it. I prefer the interface, and the breadth of software available for windows. The ONE AND ONLY REASON that I prefer mac is that font management is by far and away better on mac. Id also like to add that I professionally did graphic design for 2 years on a mac, so I know what I’m talking about. Everything else, you can do on windows. The arguments for using a mac for development – ability to run *nix software and have the cli, are really not the best arguments because – 1. You can easily run a LAMP stack on windows with a single click – try XAMPP. 2. Package management on OSX is so horrific that I would not want to even bother trying to work with the horror show that it is. Ideally I would develop ON a ubuntu box, however I chose windows so I could easily run the adobe creative suite. I can still use XAMPP for local testing, and the majority of the time, I am ssh’ed into our ubuntu testing box and our centos production server anyways. I use winscp, so any files I edit are uploaded to the remote system immediately as soon as I save them. Then it’s as simple as using putty to interact with the cli just as if you were sitting at the system. There is really no downside. And dont even get me started on how much better apt-get, yum, ppa’s and rpms are compared to the OSX shitshow. You guys can keep your OSX.
bolongsox
June 11th, 2009 10:22 pmI agree with mallchin for those three points above, although number 3 is debatable :)
Every platform has its own quirk and strength, and which one you love most is yours to choose, but then, what matters most is the usability of the tool not what the tool is, IMHO.
I’m a designer/developer for 15 years, working on projects ranging from websites, multiplatform desktop application, mobile application, to embedded devices. I even had a taste of SGI Irix back in its heyday, so i guess i can call myself a developer, am i ? so then here is my thoughts :
if you want the power of POSIX/UNIX, but couldn’t care less for those make files, get a Mac
if you want stable but cheap platform, get Linux.
if you think command line and terminal is cool and powerful, get Linux or Mac.
if you are IT pros but want to sneak up and slacking behind your boss playing games, get Windows.
if you are IT pros want to be busy cleaning up viruses and spyware all day for the rest of your career, you must love Windows unconditionally.
If you call yourself designer/developer/IT professional but still fighting over which platform is better than the other… just get a life.
as for me :
I love my Mac
I don’t use Quicksilver, as i’m happy as long Mail, Firefox, Terminal, Eclipse, Textmate, Expose and Spaces can get along nicely
I’m using USB 3 buttons mouse on my Mac
I use Linux on my server, and company servers as well, along with those virtualization bells and whistles to optimally utilize redundant server resources.
The company I work for sells mostly Windows only devices.
I still use Windows because multiplatform software i created needs to be tested on it, and also because that family PC needs something everybody is familiar with
Nothing is wrong with Windows, it’s bloated, but most people can live with such bloat, so i can not say that they are wrong either, they just don’t have as many choices as i have.
And the reason I love Mac the most : I can have a house and a Mercedes from all those work I did on my Mac, and oh… add to those a great family… then i couldn’t ask for more reason why I shouldn’t switch to ( and love ) Mac :)
brett
August 7th, 2012 9:30 amI have been using mac for 20 years, windows for 10. In all of that time, I think I got ONE virus on windows, that was on XP, and I got it from downloading dodgy software on P2P networks. That was asking for it. Besides that incident, I have never had any other viruses on windows. If you keep your system patched and up to date, and don’t frequent dodgy websites or download dodgy p2p stuff, use some common sense, you will be fine. Sorry, osx is a poor excuse for a *nix system.
Aaron
June 12th, 2009 7:58 amI personally use both windows and mac daily. I prefer mac, but it’s not for everyone or every project for that matter…
The big picture here is that we use these machines for work, entertainment, etc. Windows and Mac are excellent tools that help us all tremendously to achieve our everyday tasks. I may be a mac fanboy, but give Windows credit they have a good ad campaign going and you cannot beat the price.
Gio Bianco
June 18th, 2009 10:24 amHi there, i wanted to switch to mac about 3 month ago. Sold my Windows system and bought a Mac Pro with 2 Graphic Cards installed so i can run my 3 Screens. I need these because i got many apps running at the same time. After the first day i found the biggest problem that actualy made me install Windows on my Mac and switchback. If you have your app on diffrent screens the menubar of the app will allways stay on the primery screen, witch make you run back and forward between your screen and loos precoius time! i have not found any patches either to make the menubar stick to the app window. the solutions avaliable are far from aceptable.
SO NOW I AM RUNNING VISTA 64BIT ON E VERRY VERRY EXPENSIVE MAC PRO :-(
If there will ever bee a solution for that problem i will deffinetly start using OSX !
Greetings from germany— GIO
Vinod
June 23rd, 2009 12:53 amFew more things to add:-
1) AppleScript
2) Keyboard shortcuts
Henrique
June 23rd, 2009 2:09 pmMarketing 101 – How to turn your product’s downside into a selling point
Problem:
There’s lock-in and broken things by design
Solution:
Turn into a selling point claiming it’s “Opinionated Software”
WHasa
June 28th, 2009 11:59 pmHi dudes!
I am designer and I use VIsta 64 Ultimate.
I love it.
I wanted to buy a mac, because I was sick of this boring XP icons and pixels around, but for really small cash I upgraded my PC and I put Vista on it and I love it. And i just forgot about expensive macs.
I have 8 gigs of Ram, the vista is running so smooth, so good, no problems, everythig is just perfect.
I don’t mind mac, but all the programs I have are for windows, I feel more free to go deeper in the stuff and make whatever I want from my windows and guys, it is stupid to make from Vista Leopard Looking shit. Just use your vista.
WHasa
June 29th, 2009 12:02 amAnd in fact, these are just MACHINES!!!!
Its a crap, u just need to make your work, get your money and go out with your family, analog family I mean, analog wife, girlfriend.
thats all.
Denis
July 8th, 2009 10:05 amI love MAC!!!
Julien
July 8th, 2009 12:20 pmI am a Mac lover, ( im french sorry for my english )
But ! Im working in the Digital film industries. Im doing video etiting whit 4k raw footage ( 4096 x 2160 each frame at 24p ) Full hd is 1920-1080 …
I need a special acquistion card , 8core, 16g or ram, 3 HD output minitoring and 4terrabytes hard drive. A mac would cost me around 7000-10 000$can and a pc whit the same specs …. around 3000$, i can build it myself.
Just for the tower, im not including monitoring screen … I will go whit pc even if i like mac … i cant affort it.
bob
July 9th, 2009 4:26 pmSimply put macs are for people who want to jerk off without using porn. Linux is for people with no money and all the rest just put up with Windows.
OSX is actually a pretty awful interface – sure it looks good but its slow as hell. On the other extreme linux is butt ugly and looks like it was designed by someone who goes to 1 hour classes in graphics at nightschool.
g mar
August 3rd, 2012 2:19 pmI never mind with linux graphic as I always use it remotely via putty. I almost rarely put my hands on the servers since it can runs smoothly for years.
what…this is from 2009? I must skip this page.
nitendra
July 29th, 2009 11:26 pmexcellent article , i love to work on mac. People should come out of MS word
Thanks ,http://ansblog.com
john
August 4th, 2009 5:43 pmwhen i switched from mac to pc about a decade ago, the speed of my output/workflow more than doubled. this was primarily due to the two-button mouse, windows keyboard shortcuts, windows explorer, and the speed of working in DOS mode. all i care about is how quickly i can get from point A to point B. the only thing the mac does (and yes, I have worked on a mac in recent years), is slow me down. why? it just takes a longer to do all the same things. and i really don’t give a crap about what it looks like since i spend 99% of my time in the same looking applications anyway. photoshop on a pc looks the same on a mac. FF in a pc looks the same on a mac. PHP in a text editor looks the same on a pc as it does on a mac. i just don’t get why some people are actually proud of the fact that they’ve got a mac for which they’ve paid nearly twice as much! kind-of reminds me of my jr-high days when i actually felt better about myself because of the Polo shirts that I wore which cost twice as much as ordinary shirts. at the end of the day, it was just a shirt, and Polo was the one smiling. (maybe the same is true for Diesel jeans… I mean c’mon!!! now who’s kidding who?)
akilter
August 31st, 2009 9:07 amNice article, comments are revealing as well: PC apologists seem rabid AND cheap (an unhealthy but apparently necessary combo, IMHO).
Both are just electrified Boxes, after all… and if you want to word process, mail, surf, play games or other office or consumer-oriented functions, either box will serve (and truly, the cheaper the better). If you play games, or like to electronically tinker under the hood, you will be better served by the cheaper boxes… or even if you want to BE the geek to support friends and family: building, cleaning, maintaining and fixing everyones box. Just recognize what your motivation is…
If, on the other hand, you have evolved a “Digital Lifestyle” of Digital music, video, and photos, and want to actually CREATE your own mashes of Digital stuff (not just consume other’s creations) perhaps, look at the boxes Designed (from the ground up-since ’98) to do digital work…to work with digital software, Macs.
This is not to say that you can’t build an open PC box to do digital work, by custom picking appropriate software that will integrate well together… (ie Adobe) just don’t expect an integrated experience out of the box without considerable effort AND expense, But it CAN be done!!! (witness the above comments- especially if you primarily want to code)
It is just NOT how I want to spend my time, nor can I afford it. I get paid much more as a Designer, than an electronic technician, plus I ENJOY designing much more than ‘fixing’. I just want the system to work… NOT to spend time or money maintaining my box from viruses, and trying to figure out which formats work together. I want functionality, AND I want form… to work together and well, and So Far, Apple has made that its mission statement in ALL of its products, and while not perfect, It is at least heading in the right direction.
The tools never make the craftsman, and just by buying a mac Does NOT make you a better Designer. But just like a carpenter doesn’t want to fight himself by using cheaper tools, and will pay more for a “Hammer” with better Form & Function, because it gets out of the way and allows him to WORK faster and more accurately… so an artist will pay more for better brushes… So should Designers. But not just for better Form, or not just for faster Function, it is the two in conjunction that matters… in our own work, as well as in the tools we choose to use.
Yes, you can design on a PC, but to pretend that you are ‘better’ for the less money (or more) that you spend on your tools is silly. Are you enjoying how you spend your time, are you being well compensated for your time? If so… Great! It is the pretension of both sides of the argument that infuriates. The self-congratulatory smug Mac owner, who thinks he is a designer, or the embittered & angry PC owner who has something to prove about their bargain.
Cory Gagliardi
September 1st, 2009 6:20 amI stopped using Windows 3 years ago when Vista came out. I was a Windows enthusiast, excited for Vista, but lets face it; Windows sucks. Its been Ubuntu for the past 3 years. Ubuntu is amazing, and at this point, I could never give up having the *nix terminal. However, I am so sick of the annoyances of having a real os. I miss Illustrator. Running Photoshop over Wine is pathetic. I can’t stream Netflix. The list goes on. After years of waiting, I get my Mackbook Pro today, and I am never going back!
Grumpy Nerd
September 23rd, 2009 10:06 amWhat this article misses is that while Windows Vista isn’t that great the Microsoft Server solutions including their ASP.NET framework and languages are quite good. The Microsoft database solution Sql Server is top notch and actually heads above the MySql solution in terms of features and ease of development.
The Microsoft development environment Visual Studio is one of the best environments out there.
And finally Microsoft gives you continuity across platforms. For most purposes there isn’t a reasonable Apple server solution. However ASP.NET runs across all of the Microsoft environments from developer machine to server environment.
With Apple and open source solutions you’re deployment platform is different from your development environment. With ASP.NET you’re deploying into a WIndows Server environment. As for as bad as Vista is Microsoft’s server OSes are good solid reliable workhorses.
I’m fairly certain that the author has never experienced the Visual Studio tools or the Microsoft server environments.
Elysian
September 27th, 2009 12:20 pmthe mac vs. windows debate is old news… none of this matters anyway! Its all personal preference. And the tools DO make the designer. Would a painter be a painter without a paintbrush? I don’t think so. But its up to the painter to choose the type of paintbrush he/she feels comfortable using. I’ve used both platforms windows and macintosh… personally, I’m more comfortable on a mac. It’s not the aesthetics or the price… its all in how the tools and programs are set up… i can navigate a mac with ease… i know the commands like the back of my hand and I have less problems running the programs I need… reiterating… THE PROGRAMS I NEED! Now if you’re a designer and you don’t use a mac… cool beans… I’m happy for you. Whatever floats your boat is fine with me. I prefer mac… its easier for me to use! So stop calling ppl lame just bc they like one better than the other! its so childish!
Crazy Eddie Nambulus
September 27th, 2009 12:25 pmA computer is a computer! It breaks down the same way no matter how you look at it! Its all in whats in the brain my friends! The GUA are coming!!!
Believe the Unbelievable!
que
November 2nd, 2009 12:26 pmif GUA than i can stop working now.. nice. ;)
Vanja Djurdjevic
March 25th, 2010 9:05 amMac sucks Ppl use windows it’s better than mac and linux together (i used them).But windows is nothing special though…
1718
April 25th, 2010 8:26 amHey cody, your right browsing the internet is sooooo gay! (dumbass)
Looks Awesome
May 10th, 2010 2:52 amThis article is very good and well written. I used to be a mac hater but when I started to give Mac a honest chance, I was really happy with the OS. I see people who has never used a mac before and they start bitching about how crap it is when they themselves never really want to understand what the fuss about the reason why Macs are preferably made for Designers and Developers. You see Macs everywhere in Design Industries and Design at Uni.
To me it’s not all about the Tech Specs but the OS itself and I don’t believe that Macs are too overpriced just because either you are too poor or just found a better offer at some local electronic store that happens to have the same or probs higher specs but at a much cheaper price.
Apple did invest 20% of their profits with Adobe (src: Thoughts on Flash on the Apple Website). So I guess in a way Apple wants Adobe to work/run well specifically for the Macintosh.
For me before I switched to Mac I had Windows Vista (but now I have Windows 7 – just for games) running on Bootcamp, so I can run two operating systems on the Mac. Also before I started getting into what the Mac can do, I met a PC hater which is kind of ironic but yeah he works for Apple and he told me what the Mac can do and I didn’t really believe as to why Macs were so great. But the OS is what interested me such as Expose, Spaces, Dashboard, Applications in the Dock.
Expose – Can see all the windows within the desktop
Space – Can organize your work into different space desktop fields
Dashboard – Just one button away from viewing your favourite widgets like MAMP, Calculator, Notes without opening the program itself.
Applications in the Dock – can hide it for more space on the desktop and also quickly select the program you want to run without showing desktop and then click the program you want, so in a way it’s much more convenient and faster to select the program you want to run.
In addition, this might sound a little cliche but Macs do not get viruses. And you don’t have to spend a lot of money on an anti virus program. I mean seriously have you ever seen a anti virus program for the Mac. Been using the Mac for almost 3 years now and I seen fake viruses pretending that I’ve got the Virus or that my mac doesn’t supports those virus file types. Sure you can get a anti virus program, but there are some like AVG, Norton that cannot stop all or strong viruses like Trojan or there are some anti virus programs that limits you to the amount of websites you can view on the internet. And if you had been hit by the Virus, it might take a while to figure out how to solve this issue, and it happens to most Windows Users. So I guess Mac wins the User Friendly Web Experience.
Adam
May 11th, 2010 1:48 amI stopped reading the article as soon as I read you’re first point.
“1. Open Source Friendly”
Yeah apple’s open source friendly, what planet are you from? They’re the most locked don’t idiotic anti filesharing, anti freewill driven company of utter dispair.
Nice iPhone – Oh wait, I have to jailbreak it for it to be useful, oh look Apple screwed us over there too. Oh, nice.
No google calendar sync with my iPhone, nice.
I dislike Bill Gates, I dislike windows, but it’s the far superior of the 2 evils. Mac OS is just a gloryfied version of unix, and that’s a propper open source bit of kit.
Mohit | CSSJockey
July 26th, 2010 2:05 pmI recently bought an iMac and having a very hard time adapting its features. I found Windows 7 is much better than Mac. Customizing stuff is way too easy in Windows than a Mac.
Take an example of changing the mouse pointer speed…
In windows i can simply drag the slider to higher side and its done where as on mac I have to find and type a terminal command to do so..
That’s stupid.
$ defaults write -g com.apple.mouse.scaling 30
(this is for people who are new and feel the mouse is very slow)
May be I am new to Mac so it might take some time to learn all these commands and other hacks but so far I am not happy switching to Mac.
I was tired searching for “enable smtp emails in XAMPP on a Mac” and then searched “Why developers choose a mac” I wish I would have read all the feedback before spending on a Mac :(
I searched youtube for the same question and all results are for setting up XAMPP on windows and for mac I just found MAC v/s PC crap..
Anyways I’ll try my best to include Mac in my daily development otherwise I’ll keep it to test cross browser/OS compatibility for the projects I do.
By the way I’ve installed Windows 7 via VMWare Fusion to make sure I don’t kick my Mac if something’s not working..
Miture Binesderti
September 3rd, 2010 4:41 pm@Mohit: If it’s hard on a Mac you’re doing it wrong.
I’m amazed that you were able to google how to change the pointer speed by a command prompt but didn’t find a link to System Preferences. I think you may just be one of those people that finds everything in life difficult because you want it to be so.
Also you don’t change the mouse pointer speed in windows by magically waving your mouse around and having windows know what you mean (as you imply). Instead you do this:
1) Click on start.
2) Click on control panel…
2a) Unless it’s not there so you have to click on system
2b) Unless it’s not there so then you have to click on programs
2b1) Click on system
2b2) Click on control panel
3) Click on the mouse icon
( it may be in different locations depending on how you have your control panel setup)
4) Click on the motion tab…
4a) Unless a third party driver is installed on your system like Logitech then good luck finding it among the 47 tabs.
5) Slide the slider.
Note: Do NOT turn on the mouse trails because it will bring every game you play to a crawl.
How do you do it in on a Mac?
1) Click on System Preferences (the little gear icon on your menu bar)
2) Click on the mouse icon that says “Mouse” (makes sense huh?)
3) Slide the very first slider that says, “Tracking speed.”
Or
1) Type mouse in Spotlight (you don’t even have to type it all, just “mou”)
2) Press enter
3) Slide the very first slider that says, “Tracking speed.”
The problem is not the OS, it’s you. You don’t like things that are different. They make you uncomfortable by tickling that primitive instinct that change is bad. This does not make you a bad person, it just makes you normal. However your level of anger at change is something you might want to look into.
WujekSamoZlo
September 12th, 2010 1:27 pmIts like picking your favourite brand. Mac’s don’t present anything useful to me for a $1200 I got myself an awesome gaming laptop that no Mac in the same price range will ever beat. Development soft, open-sourceness – come on what kind of BS is that. My pc don’t come with PHP and rails but it doesn’t mean I can’t download it and use it… Macs are for pretentious douchebags…
Man Im tired of reading weepy crap arguments
September 21st, 2010 12:18 pmReally, why is this an issue at this point. I personally use an abacus for all my development. I find the classic “beads on a string” GUI interface to be refreshing. Plus they have incredible battery life, in fact they don’t even need batteries. Plus because it is a legacy system there is an incredibly large support network. I mean, really an operating system that a baby can work. Lets see Windows, Linux or OSX top that?
In truth, I bought a mac because every design job out there said I needed Mac experience. As long as my code is strong and my clientele are happy, I’ll use a graphing calculator and an ink pen. Grow up people, the have and have not arguments suck.
John
October 2nd, 2010 9:12 pmI read through this hoping to find a good enough reason to switch to a mac. Unfortunately, I haven’t found one yet. The design is nicer but that’s about it.
Pongstr
October 4th, 2010 11:50 pmI feel sorry for the writer. lol
I think what the readers hates here is the shameless advertising of Apple and bashing of Windows(Microsoft).
Seriously, Mac and Windows are both good on whatever the user’s preferences are and as of Open Source geezz…
jojd
October 28th, 2010 9:22 pmEhm…
Developers? Are you sure about that? Parsing around some html and css isn’t exactly development.
Most any CS class is taught in Windows/Linux, always has been. Compiling in OSX is pretty crap. Xtools is pretty horrid. Eclipse/Zend kill it.
Ruby on Mac? Uhhh Ruby is free.
Python perhaps? Yeah Python is free too…
MAMP? ummm XAMPP on Windows, LAMP on linux
Adobe products? Are you serious? It’s on both.
Textmate? You actually paid 30 dollars to edit some text LoL
* The Digital Color Meter – umm Windows ColorCop free, done.
* Console – uhh command line, cygwin, power shell
* Terminal – vim is FREE
* XCode Tools – pretty horrid, visual studio/eclipse/zend are all better
* Zoom – windows has this built in.
* Safari Debug Mode – Safari is hands down THE worst browser out of the big 4.
* Time Machine – if you can’t figure out windows backups well… please stay away from my companies equipment. There is a reason we lock all you “designers” out of important file systems/admin levels.
Intel Inside? uhh okay, have fun paying double to triple the price.
support? umm Genius bar workers aren’t that technical, sorry to break it to you.
virtualization? you are kidding right, Windows has been doing this forever.
textmate/growl… again, pathetic. filezilla notepad++ komodo eclipse…for the win…
open source friendly? uhhh open source stuff runs like crap half the time in Xwindows.
Anyway, do not trust this article if you are an aspiring developer, you should probably start learning linux thought, don’t waste your time with darwin/mac…
Only reason you would need a mac to dev on is if you are working with iphone/ipad sdk or writing actual mac apps in objective c or cocoa.
brett
August 7th, 2012 9:38 amthanks, someone who knows what hes talking about. jeez, preaching to the chior over here. buncha damn noobs in these parts. package management in osx is horrid, why would anyone even want to bust out a terminal on it, when the damn thing is so butchered to not even be a recognizable *nix system. forget even trying to properly build stuff from source and install it correctly, dealing with dependencies and outdated versions of crap that apple doesn’t let you upgrade, ancient versions of jvm on osx 10.5 or 10.6 was it im talking to you.
aaron
November 29th, 2010 12:42 pmjojd, you are absolutely right. Im an aspiring Drupal developer and have been for the past 5 years. And i say “aspiring” because it never stops. I thought about the mac for a while and even before I read this post had decided on a Dell system with Linux OS because i know the truth. Recently bought a Dell Inspiron N17r with all the bells and whistles for a grand and I love it. A multitasking dream and the usual Dell speed with only an I5 processor. Coming from a 5yr old dell 1700 that never gave me any problems I am completely satisfied and have all the power and options I need and then some on the new machine. Developers, do your self a favor, save some cash, no need to profile, run linux if all you’re afraid of is some “virus”. Its not that serious. Peace.!
Frank
January 30th, 2011 7:11 pmI think one of the most overlooked facets of the whole Windows vs Mac argument is licensing. For individual users, licensing is probably not such a big issue. But for a company that employs staff from various parts of the world to create digital content in a variety of different languages, Microsoft go out of their way to make life hell.
My own company is based in Spain, and prior to switching to Mac’s we had a huge problem getting computers with operating systems that would work in the languages we required. Our Russian staff need Russian, Our Swedish Staff need Swedish, and our German staff needed German etc. etc. Unfortunately, Microsoft’s insane licensing system would only allow us to purchase computers in Spain that are pre-installed with Spanish Windows. This is true of ALL European countries – even though Europe is now one big economic area. The only way to overcome the problem was to order full versions of Windows from suppliers in each of the countries for which we needed language editions. These would then have to be sent to Spain and installed onto the locally purchased computers – effectively, we were buying the operating system twice.
You can imaging what a refreshing change it was to know that our Mac’s could be set up and configured in any language of our choice at any time. Furthermore, the local Mac store could even supply us with regional keyboards at short notice. This is one of the advantages of having the OS and Hardware supplier as one and the same person.
But having switched to Mac’s, we are still able to utilise many of our existing windows applications, and they run perfectly well – we even have Mac versions of Microsoft Office which are far more superior than their Windows counterpart.
So from a business perspective, I would go Mac every time – not because the hardware or the software is any better or worse than Windows or the PC’s that run Windows, but more because of the total flexibility of the Mac OS to meet international needs, and the fact that the hardware/software package is supported as one by a very efficient local Apple Store.
phzeddy
February 4th, 2011 1:22 amSoftware vendors: Microsoft, Apple..etc
Hardware vendors: Apple, IBM, Sony, HP…etc.
Users: You and me. (Their buyers, whatever these top guys to, they want our money in anyway they can, be it by one mouse button or bundled apps.)
People do confuse PC with Microsoft, Windows is just an OS, like OS X like Linux etc..and we have Hardware, from different vendors, but only one vendor for apple who happen to also to be a vendor of OS X which happens to run only on Apple hardware.
IMO the choice and use of a certain hardware is the users choice, whether it is influenced by the ability to buy, or the requirements.
Freedom of choice, that is why there are different colors, because some like blue and some don’t. That is why every vendor does marketing and does sell…because that is simply the nature of business.
THAT IS WHY, WHAT YOU CALL BEAUTIFUL, IS WHAT SOMEONE CALLS UGLY.
Just go back to work.
Babak Azimzadeh
February 4th, 2011 9:19 amsomehow your ticked to good points but as you say color variations, here you should evaluate your opinion. because aesthetics is not only color, there are dozen of things which should be considered..
Babak Azimzadeh
February 4th, 2011 9:15 amvery informative and well explained…. if you are a Microsoft fan, there the only thing I can say is we all developers hate Micro$oft. the reason?! be the one you will realize.
abhi
April 26th, 2011 5:22 amExactly after 2 years I read this article again.. Smashing rocks..
Georg
February 9th, 2012 12:40 pmI didn’t find one convincing argument to swtich to Mac in this article. So I guess the title is a bit misleading. In fact, it’s simply a matter of preferences. I personally get annoyed using Mac as I don’t like only 1 mouse button, the way windows get maximized, the boring look (you refereed to as consistency), etc.
However, I am sure both systems are great. The only thing I like more on Mac is the design itself. They are genius – be that the iPhone, Mac or iPad. It looks sexy and they are leading the field. But I can now have the same (in my opinion a bit more sexier) in PC version – (i.e. Lenovo U300s – with widescreen). I know, I know .. they copy Mac ?! But who actually cares?
Farschidus
May 27th, 2012 1:31 pmI wanted to give you a plus, sorry for my miss click. Becoz I use iPad and the thumbs icon is really small. I agree with you totaly, specially about Visual Studio. Its the best IDE ever.
nani
June 23rd, 2012 11:24 amI’m both mac and pc user spending more than 10h in front of screens on daily basis for years. Actually doing just simple web development on the mac book pro and as it made me a bit nervous to recur every simple step through too many dialogs on mac (however found spaces really advanced feature of os x) and I’m actually reading this nice article instead of doing the homework. Definitely, multitasking, flexibility and productivity on PC is a mile away higher (thanks to win7 and plenty of great tools available on it).
Also want to note that shift has happen regarding stability of two os’s, didn’t encounter any issue pushing the win7 to maximum with numerous vm’s for months, till’ needs on “force quit” of stacked app’s on os x become an everyday occurrence.
At the end will go to office and finish the job in half a time needed on spending valuable time making recurs of a plenty of simple steps and go to beach afternoon as it’s very warm around.
brett
August 7th, 2012 9:42 amseriously… my mac KP’ed more then my win 7 system ever bluescreened. In about 7 months of serious web dev on windows 7, rebooting the system about once a month and using 6 of 8 gigs ram, NOT ONE hiccup out of win7. these mac fanboys are totally obtuse. i speak from 10 & 20 years on both platforms, way back to mac os 8 so don’t even start with me.
Andrea
August 13th, 2012 11:51 pmDevelopers on Mac is like a guy trying to sell himself as a biker while riding on a Honda Valkyrie. It’s expensive and looks cool but they don’t know how to use it right.
DP
September 10th, 2012 6:23 pmI switched from PC to Mac in 2005, starting with the original 1.42GHz PowerPC Mac mini and I haven’t looked back.
By day, I use a modern, well specified HP desktop and the build quality, driver support and choice of components is so terrible that the machine runs slower than any Mac I’ve owned, despite being better specified than all bar my current iMac. I am on my second hard drive after the first failed four months into having the system.
I think Mac OS X was the worst thing to happen to Windows. Mostly because the more user-friendly it got, the more Microsoft implemented ill-thought visual flair and changes to Vista and 7 that made them harder to use. I have to turn off so much of the added fluff to make Windows usable again that new system setup is like running a gauntlet.
It appears to be getting worse. Windows 8 is fantastic for a tablet device, but trying to use it with a mouse has been an absolute chore. For all of their talk about no compromises, it feels like a massively compromised experience. I’m sure I can customise it how I need it, but given that its main rival is how I need it out of the box, and costs significantly less to upgrade each time, my choice is almost made for me.