I expect more people dev on OSX simply because of wanting to design for IOS, and being locking into the OS to do so.
I expect a large part of those 50% still on Windows to be corporate devs, accessing StackOverflow during work hours on an OS they didn't necessarily have a say on. Many of them will be using OSX or Linux at home : if anything, the non-Windows figures could be underestimated.
BTW StackExchange is a Windows / .NET shop, not exactly prime suspects for Apple fanboyism. https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10369/which-tools-a...
Look at comments about the post. Someone wrote that "OSX" is perfect Linux. Nice joke. If anything OSX is wasted BSD. There is nothing but fanboyism on this page.
I wasn't aware OSX had one. Not an official one from Apple, anyway.
There are third-party package managers, but that's not the same.
Looking at my peers (CS graduates last year) only a handful of us (out of ~100) know the differences and histories, and all of us will happily accept linux=unix in general conversation.
Apart from that I believe you're largely right. I had to switch from Windows to OS X for this reason exactly.
I'm an Android dev joined a Xamarin team recently, and you can't work on the iOS version lest you have an OS X machine. As far as UX goes, I'm not too pleased with the transition.
In my company for example, you will get assigned a Windows machine, unless you convince your boss to get one of the "creative people" machine (designers, typesetters, ...), which is OSX. Linux, sure you can. But not on a laptop ( so if you want to work from home that's OSX or Windows), and you will need to use a VDI to use the corporate software including office.
Even if you like Linux better, that's a lot of hurdles.
Since I became a 100% laptop user, my GNU/Linux usage has been constrained to VMs, server and a small netbook I use to travel. But zero Mac OS X around me.
Love the OS with its NeXTStep roots, but could never get myself to pay the 1000 euros difference to get a Mac that would be somehow comparable to e.g. Thinkpad W510 in terms of available CPU/discrete graphics.
Also for better or worse, my Windows roots go all the way to Windows 3.1/Win 16, so those skills are quite valuable in the enterprise. And I enjoy the love C++, .NET and Java have on the platform anyway.
iOS is the only thing that might force me to eventually get a Mac, but so far Android and Windows Phone already keep me busy enough.
When it does, we use VMWare with Ubuntu or Red-Hat distributions.
iOS alone does not explain OS X's popularity. I know several people who develop using OS X and have never dealt with iOS[0], including myself.
[0] One caveat here: I actually have developed for iOS, but never on OS X. That was on Windows.
In 2013 Linux and OSX made up ~38 percent of users. Now they are at ~48% while Windows has declined.
Both Linux and OSX usage have continued to grow. To me that is the bigger story here.
56,000 respondents is a small sample?
I'm by no means a stats guru, so correct me if I'm wrong. But that seems like a pretty good error rate to me.
The criticism that StackOverflow isn't a good representation of the general developer community still might be valid. I honestly don't know enough about its demographics to make any educated opinion about that statement.
[1] I make this assumption because there a finite set of jobs. Even if a developer's job requires them to use Windows, they had an equal probability of another developer of having a job that allowed them the freedom to choose their platform/required them to use OS X.
In almost 40 years of experience, I never had the choice to chose the OS.