I use Windows as my daily driver OS now for both native/web/mobile/devops work and I expect to see more and more developers making that same switch in the coming years.
And yeah, they suck a lot[1], but there's a way to fix if you use Homebrew: https://stackoverflow.com/a/57973942/8280773
[1] Performance-wise and also when you take into account that most shell scripts/tutorials on the internet are written with a GNU userland in mind.
zsh has replaced bash as the default shell, btw.
Also, Mac is a certified UNIX environment, it is native.
Well if peripherals vendor and "common communication/presentation software" didn't test on Linux, whose drawback is it now? That being said, I have used the following without any trouble on Linux: Slack, Discord, Teamviewer, Zoom, BBB and BlueJeans. Vendors don't put enough investment into testing for Linux due to comparatively low usage numbers - but that doesn't mean that it is a "drawback" of the OS.
As for hardware, as Vinnl explains above the way to go is buy certified hardware. Ubuntu and Red Hat folks certify a bunch of Dell and Lenovo laptops to work with Linux. I use Ubuntu on a Dell XPS 13 and I don't need to do ANY extra setup. Things just work (TM) - including my Sennheiser and Jabra headphones.
The same is true for Zoom: things like accelerated video streaming are universally supported on laptop GPUs, but software support is spotty for some apps/OSes. Things like screen sharing are 100% software-side.
While I'd love to use a Linux workstation (and often do), it's simply not there yet in those areas. That has nothing to do with "high-end hardware" and everything to do with less robust software support than many alternatives--including MacOS.
I guess you could make the case that because MacOS has to support fewer kinds of hardware, they can spend more time on making software support robust, but I'm neither convinced of that argument nor convinced that's what you meant by your post.
Likewise, if you use an underpowered laptop, or one for which Ubuntu doesn't have proper drivers, you're going to have a hard time using Zoom.
I'm not saying that you'll never have issues (which I'm sure holds for MacOS as well), or even that you might not have slightly more issues than on MacOS (see your last paragraph), but things are definitely not as bad as comments online would have you believe, because many of those can be ascribed to issues like I mentioned above.
As a linux user, I'd like to say that I've seen that happen just as often with OSX users on my team. I think that's just Zoom's shitty app. But I do agree about peripheral hardware issues plaguing Linux. Bluetooth headphones are still such a hassle on Ubuntu 20.04.
This goes especially for audio.
I’m going to guess that Apple peripherals + Apple OS on Apple hardware is actually hassle-free but then what’s the point of a standard.
I still miss macOS, so much, because
- Mac Software I was accustomed to using (and it was lot) is no longer available to me (don't discount this problem when suggesting switching)
- I had to customize Windows 10 a lot, (many hours of work) to emulate native features of macOS I personally can't live without (including remapping keys, which turns out not to be trivial on Windows)
- I miss the general UI polish of macOS. Windows is...ugly in a lot of places.
- I miss Finder, and I've tried so many file explorer alternatives and nothing comes close
- Windows 10 can't seem to ever remember my screen layout for my applications. I had to resort to an application to do this for me. Drives me nuts
- macOS has way better HiDPI support (I have 3 4K monitors)
It ain't trivial, is what I'm saying.
Don't get me started on Linux, I loved Pop OS conceptually, but the support for basic things, like natural scrolling, was completely lacking, and I had to resort to all kinds of hacks to get a desktop semi functional. Not to mention, a lot of Linux 'add on' packages are abandonware and would break constantly when updating to new versions, and for basic things, like dealing with scroll direction, I had to edit files in a terminal, which I just found annoying. It just wasn't a polished out of the box experience. Don't get me started with it not recognizing adapters properly and issues with GPUs. macOS is alot of things, but they take 'just works' more seriously than any other operating system I've ever used.
Honestly, I find it incredibly odd that companies that have more manpower than Apple (you'd be shocked how little manpower they devote to some things) can't manage to pull off the polish of macOS UI
Why do you miss Finder? Search feature? Preview.app? Opposite to you, I never like it.
As for software, I miss Finder because I felt the interface was intuitive and I really liked the features Finder like tags, smart folders, and the way you could custom it with extensions and settings. I like the built in software, like Preview in particular.
I have yet to have anyone show me an OS that comes close to matching macOS out of the box. Even conceding customizations, they're just so lacking in comparison, to someone who 'clicked' with macOS.
Granted, not everyone likes macOS, and thats fine, but to come at it from a place that its so easy to migrate to another platform, ignores so many things about macOS that make it great to a macOS user.
My job requires Windows 10, thats how I ended up on the platform. I learned to get around and replicate as much of the features as I could, but so many are just fundamentally missing and even if I wanted to pay for the functionality (and for so much of it I would), the software doesn't even exist.
After getting a Windows gaming PC, I've been spending more and more of my time, developing and otherwise, on PC. I prefer it because it's where I have my large (low DPI :( ) monitor, but Windows is still full of so many papercuts in general usage (I miss being able to drag a file into a Open File dialog so much) that I still greatly prefer using macOS.
Windows has some niceties to try and make the transition better - The Windows Terminal app is pheonomial, and Powershell tries to map rm to whatever the Powershell command is - rm -rf doesnt work as expected though. I honestly don't find myself using WSL all that much - I only use it when I can't figure out how to make ping go forever in Powershell.
Anyone who has used any Linux knows HiDPI or mixed DPI monitors are a massive issue on Linux. Even when you get your xrandr configured perfectly fine, disconnecting is a hassle. And that's completely ignoring apps, QT, GTK, etc all handle DPI differently. So you need a different config with DPI setting on each.
One of the best I've used is PopOS with the HiDPI daemon enabled. But even that has issues.
Even Windows can't deal properly with having a 4k laptop screen and a 2k monitor attached. Have to deal with weird text scaling issues and other weird scaling issues.
But MacOS can and does it beautifully.