Why I prefer Mac for Development !
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I am a full stack developer. Currently doing some project on nextjs / nodejs
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Jared Malcolm7y ago
On mobile so I'm sorry for being terse.
I can't speak to Linux, but you are flat wrong, lack knowledge, or lack some bit of understanding in regards to nearly every point. As many have said the title is click baity which makes the fact that the content is incorrect even worse.
Rewrite this as more of an opinion piece "Why I chose to develop in a Mac" and you gain credibility. The inverse has happened by stating fallacies as truth.
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Steven Shaw7y ago
Docker is a memory hog on macOS
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Jan Vladimir Mostert7y ago
New MacBook Pros (2016-2019) are terrible, mine (maxed out 2017 version) had a semi-dysfunctional USB-C port, screen was delaminating after 18 months, had overheating issues after 8 months (this was the quad-core version, not even the 6 or 8 core newer models), graphics card glitching so badly some days that i had to use an external monitor, screen sometimes not switching on when opening the lid, random blackouts / freezes and the last straw was the keyboard, some keys getting stuck, another one causing duplicates when you type and my e-key just snapped off, the clips keeping it in place simply broke off.
Had the laptop not been stolen after the last repairs, i would probably have thrown it away, every repair meant being without it for a week or more - totally unreliable. (compare this to my 2011 MacBook Pro which lasted for 7 years and which i sold for 50% of the price i bought it for, the news ones just can't handle heavy-duty workloads)
Going back to Linux as soon as i can find a replacement machine.
Security-wise, in the last 5 years, MacOS was actually doing worse than Windows, security on Linux is still tight compare to the other two.
Rossman explains why the new MacBook Pros are bad (i experienced most of these issues): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-0ejhpO1hc
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Syed Fazle Rahman7y ago
Jan Vladimir Mostert This was helpful. I was considering to upgrade to a new macbook (2019). I am using Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015 model right now. I think it's the last non-butterfly keyboard version.
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Jan Vladimir Mostert7y ago
Stick to your 2015 version for now, they seem to be the last generation of MacBook Pros that wasn't plagued with problems. The 2019 MBP already has a repair program and not to mention the throttling issues. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=682V63mdjYE
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Jan Vladimir Mostert7y ago
Keyboard issues seems to be common: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KuVvb9DTaU
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Jan Vladimir Mostert7y ago
Yeah, as a VIM user, it took quite a bit of time getting used to the touchbar escape, it's definitely not unusable, but not great either.
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Ayushka Partohap7y ago
I hope hashnode adds a downvote emoji or something. Clickbait sensationalist. This article is annoying to say the least. Not even going to comment on the content.
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Amit Chambial7y ago
I am not against any of the operating system, but according to me I have used Windows (from childhood), Linux (4yrs in college), and MacOs( approx 8 months) and this is all the things I have experienced. I am not writing this article to support Apple or any company , this is my genuine review for all the OS I have used so far.
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Ayushka Partohap7y ago
Buddy, you decide to put a catchy title on an opinion piece which in my take is poorly written. Say whatever you want but these days that's called clickbait, and clickbait content only does one thing for it's audience: waste their time. It's your bad luck this article popped up on my feed, I have strong opinions about wasting other people's time.
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Deactivated User7y ago
I don't think this is a really good take. For the record, I use macOS as my primary operating system, and routinely use Linux, and have used Windows where necessary.
Slow bootup. slow
This is mostly computer dependent, not operating system dependent. Windows can boot very quickly on modern hardware. macOS boots slowly on older hardware. As well as factors such as additional software and services installed, any present malware, disk fragmentation, etc.
No bash terminal
Not true. Windows Subsystem for Linux will readily enable a Bash prompt, at least for Windows 10, and is built-in functionality. Cygwin has also existed for decades and is available on legacy versions of Windows.
Most of the tutorial for Unix based system
You should probably read the documentation for whatever programming language or environment you're using so that you've got it all set up. Nowadays, getting things running on Windows isn't too difficult, but I do prefer the ease of macOS and Linux. Hence why I use them.
Hang oftenly
Citation needed.
Windows update slow the internet and also next update doesn't improve performance but decrease it.
Windows Update's invasiveness is a genuine complaint and something that irks me especially about Windows 10, but any small performance penality in exchange for security is worth it in the long run, at least in my opinion.
Command prompt is fucked up
PowerShell is a powerful tool used by many. Batch / CMD is mostly there for backwards-compatibility iirc.
Virus
Windows is the most dominant PC platform, therefore it suffers from the biggest number of malware incidents. macOS and Linux respectively are not immune to malware - they're simply not profitable enough for organised criminal gangs to target. Although this is steadily changing.
As for Linux...
Buggy
Can be, but that's the price you pay for increased freedom of choice and customisation. Most mainstream distributions like Ubuntu, Mint, Debian, and Fedora work just fine unless you start messing with what's under the hood. Windows and macOS are no different in that regard.
Updates increase the performance but come with some bugs.
Stick to stable channels and you're fine. If you use bleeding edge, you accept the risks.
Not every hardware is compatible with Linux.My old computer used to have wifi and graphics problem.
Valid point, but on the other hand, a wide range of hardware works out of the box without the need for driver hunting or configuration.
Decrease battery performance.
Can't say I've had this issue, but ymmv
Now to address your points on macOS
Unix based
Fair point, but not really a benefit in itself
Support Bash shell
So does Windows and Linux
Easy to install software
Both Windows and Linux have access to package managers and app stores
Faster opening of apps
Not necessarily true. Hardware and configuration dependent.
For mobile development it's best. You can parallely run iOS and Android emulator without any lag
Can't comment on Xcode or iOS development, but Android Studio is still a laggy hunk of sh** on macOS.
Vs code startup time is very fast.
It's an Electron app. It works roughly the same across all platforms.
Backed up by Apple. Hence updates boost the performance and also the user experience .
Windows is backed up by Microsoft. Ubuntu is backed up by Canonical. Fedora is backed up by IBM. And so on.
I'm sorry if this comes across as abrasive, that's seriously not my intention, but I think it's dangerous to present opinions as facts, especially as many new developers will be looking at what options are available to them when it comes to new computers and development environments, and they should be able to make an informed choice before forking over extravagant amounts of money for a new Macintosh.
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Amit Chambial7y ago
Your all points are valid but if money is not an issue I'll suggest MacBook
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Amrit Pandey7y ago
4 years old MacBook Pro user here.
I'd have ignored this post if you only had wrote about Windows Vs Mac.
Buddy you are so wrong about "Linux".
Idk what distro you are using, maybe Ubuntu 18 on a cheap 14 inch 2008 acer laptop, but linux-based OS be it BSD, SUSE or debian are very performant on cheap hardware and on the other hand macOS is a bloated crap that can only work on a 1.7lac gig.
MBP does not support linux, but if you ever get chance in future do install debian on it, the thing will fly like unicorn. Boot time is like 3 seconds, apps opens up in the blink of eye.
I don't like MacOS because it locks me as developer to do low-level stuff with it.
And btw, MacOS is BSD based OS.
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Amit Chambial7y ago
Not every hardware is supported...(My laptop was i5 5th gen 2015 model HP).Also solution to any problem is not fast. Though if you have a problem with budget I'll always suggest a laptop with good specs and Linux installed on it.
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Amrit Pandey7y ago
Were you running Ubuntu on it? And what do you mean by support?
I told you, I have MBP(2017) too, but I still like Debian more than MacOS.
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Amit Chambial7y ago
Like Realtek Wireless Driver, Nvidia graphics card and etc . Also I'll also prefer Linux if all of such problem were not there. It slows down my development speed.
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Jan Vladimir Mostert7y ago
Canonical released a list of supported laptops, so at least for Ubuntu, there's a list of fully supported machines https://certification.ubuntu.com/desktop/models/?category=Laptop&level=Any&vendors=Dell&release=18.04+LTS&query=&page=2
Linux can be installed on a Mac as well
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Amrit Pandey7y ago
Hardware manufacturer needs to be blamed for this as they do not open source driver software. Right now I am also using a HP 15 laptop with MX Linux on it and I fixed WiFi issue, and that was fun. https://blog.amritpandey.dev/how-to-enable-wifi-linux-hp15-laptop/
At the end it all comes down to preference, when I got my MBP for the first time I loved it, but when my demand grew I felt the need of having a computer which I could use as I want without taking it to the service center and paying hefty sum to get it fixed.
Its difficult to find a fully open-source laptop in India, the once that are available are less in stock and others are just expensive.
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Amrit Pandey7y ago
Jan Vladimir Mostert Ubuntu consumes a lot of ram because of its smooth UI. I don't like Ubuntu because it is bloated.
Once I installed Linux Mint on MBA and although the experience was good, I found that apple has locked BIOS so the glowing apple and LED started misbehaving. I thought of unlocking BIOS settings to fix that but then I saw that they had restricted users to unlock BIOS.
So if you do anything with MB software or low level settings the warranty is still void. :(
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Jan Vladimir Mostert7y ago
Amrit Pandey, have you tried using one of the non-default window managers? There are some very lightweight window managers, XFCE is nice, i've used Blackbox on a Gentoo Linux machine (Blackbox taking lightweight to the extreme), iceWM and WindowMaker if you really want to go minimal. Gentoo and ArchLinux are great if you need to customize your OS for ultra performance with very minimal system resources. I was running Gentoo on an 800MHz machine for a long time and it was smoother than most people's setups who had 2 and 3 GHz machines with 10x the RAM.
MacBook repairs are insanely expensive in South Africa as well, typically, for most problems, it costs the same if not more to repair than buying a new one. My 2017 MacBook Pro went in for keyboard repairs and it required replacing more than 50% of the machine, luckily it was covered under Apple's recall program, otherwise it would have been ridiculously expensive to repair.
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Amrit Pandey7y ago
Jan Vladimir Mostert I use i3 window manager by default which is like no UI at all.
Although I have not used i3 on Ubuntu. In addition to UI, Ubuntu also have many proprietary software that if you go on deleting those will end up creating a new distro.
I have no beef with Arch, but I am a debian person. Customization are possible with every distro out there you just have to choose one that fits you. And I love debian(currently MxLinux).
Same problem of MBP keyboard with me as well. I got the keyboard replaced 3 times and for free. I had to write a mail to Apple Support in US in 2018 about keyboard problem, I talked to their cust executive directly, so they fixed it the third time for free. Since that repair I use a silicon cover and it has been 1 year my keyboard had no problems.
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Jan Vladimir Mostert7y ago
Likewise, Debian and its derivatives are nice, everything is in sane places and its mostly user friendly, its packaging system is easy to use and applications are generally available in .deb if it's available on Linux.
CentOS / RedHat / Fedora and its rpm packages are just weird, can't get used to the rpm flags, rpm -i / rpm -U / rpm -e / rpm -q / ... VS Debian, apt-get install / update / remove / ... package, but that's just preference. I remember on CentOS, there was also yum install, yum update and then yumdb. Would be nice if there was one package manager that could interface all of these so that you could use a single package manager across all distros.
Security on CentOS is way better than on Debian for example, so if security is a concern, then CentOS is not a bad option if you don't mind old packages.
Gentoo's Portage is rather nice, but compiling packages from source can take forever on slow machines (had to wait a whole weekend for Firefox to compile on my old 800MHz computer, on my AMD Socket 754, 3.2 GHz machine, it only took a few minutes)
i3 WM looks very similar to Blackbox, in Blackbox you had to physically write a bit config / code to get a taskbar, your application launcher is right clicking on the desktop, that's all you had. For a lowe powered dev machine, that's perfect (it actually reduces distractions), typically i only needed my IDE, browser and terminal, anything else i would start from command line.
RE MBP: You can claim a refund for any keyboard repairs you've done out of your own pocket. Silicon cover would have increased my overheating issues and probably would not have stopped the keys from cracking or breaking off the keyboard. If you write 100s of thousands of lines of code a year (wrote close to a million lines on that keyboard if not more), that keyboard simply doesn't last, the old design lasted fine for such heavy workloads. Cheap microsoft keyboards did the same, spacebars cracked, springs broke, enter keys cracked, vowels became non responsive after heavy use, their more expensive keyboards lasted forever which means this is simply a poorly designed keyboard on the MBP using cheap materials.
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Amrit Pandey7y ago
I'll try gentoo.
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Thamaraiselvam7y ago
Your words on Linux:
Updates increase the performance but come with some bugs
So you are trying to say Mac OS release comes with no bugs?
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Amit Chambial7y ago
In comparison with Linux and Mac , Linux is more buggy and for Mac bugs are most probably solved in next update.
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Thamaraiselvam7y ago
Its all matter of choosing Distributions.
Ubuntu LTS is very stable version and Arch releases regular updates, more than 90% cloud are running on Linux and I have been using Multiple Linux Distributions for years, I don't think so it is Buggy Operating System and Linux also fix their bugs on their next versions. 🤷♂️
I know its personal taste but I would suggest all developers to use Linux than Mac and if you taste Linux customization and you will never get back to Mac or Windows
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Amit Chambial7y ago
I was using Linux for past 4 years , so I am sharing my view on Linux. I always had a problem with it, though development was easy on it but my battery drained very fast and next update solved the previous but comes with another bug.( Especially the wifi problem , I searched and solved the problem after long hours of search but next update again puts up that problem and previous solution didn't worked)
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Thamaraiselvam7y ago
I totally agree on your 3rd and 4th points, Since Mac Hardware and Software tightly coupled you won't get much hardware issues but Linux has to deal with all kind of hardware then that is a real mess, Still, I am still not convinced with first 2 points on Linux, Anyway again its personal choice.
"Ever wondered why Linux is the best OS to run on any server? Because it is more reliable!"
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Jan Vladimir Mostert7y ago
It's still lightyears away from being decent compared to a proper Linux terminal (or MacOS terminal), i'm using all three. Microsoft will be embedding a Linux VM into Windows to give it a proper terminal, let's see how it works. https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/6/18534687/microsoft-windows-10-linux-kernel-feature
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Yashu Mittal7y ago
Which MacBook you are using? How much did it cost?
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Yashu Mittal7y ago
Oh! That's great. 🤗
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Amit Chambial Blog.
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Full Stack Developer and a maker. See my portfolio at https://portfolio.devaman.dev
