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Comment by m_a_g | Hacker News Reader

I don't know a single techie person who uses Windows (other than for gaming), let alone Mail in Windows.

But the other replies are right. We're not really representative of the entire population, especially if you consider the developing world.

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This phenomenon of software engineers using MacBooks for work is a rare and primarily coastal phenomenon, at least in North America. Virtually all software engineering at utility companies, hospitals, state and local governments, and similarly boring but critical enterprise companies in industries like insurance happens on Windows on Azure using Windows or Microsoft oriented stacks.

>Windows on Azure

Lol, citation needed if you actually believe this.

>or Microsoft oriented stacks.

is a very complicated way to say Windows desktop.

Re windows desktop, no, it's not a complicated way of saying that. I am talking about, for example:

- ASP.NET Core backends running on anything (e.g. Linux)

- Angular or Vue frontends running on anything

- applications using SQL Server databases running on anything

- applications targeting on-prem Windows servers or VMs or, sure, Windows desktops

- data / reporting systems that interact with AAS

Apparently I phrased my response poorly. I was responding to the narrow context of the idea that devs aren't using Azure VMs instead of Macs. I was not disputing the popularity of Azure.

Microsoft sales is surprisingly good at selling Azure to c-level at companies where the primary output isn't software, based on existing Windows/Office deployments. Unfortunately also true for Teams. Retailers are also often opposed to AWS because they consider Amazon a competitor in its entirety.

Just so you know this is a very ignorant comment. I don't mean that as an insult, but literally you are ignorant of the facts. If you care you should use this opportunity to educate yourself on the state of the Microsoft stack.

This is something "bothering" me as well. It's either Mac or Linux if you want to be "cool" in tech.

I am always like "wait do you not write any Windows software or is it all on the Web"?

Maybe I am ignorant and stuff and maybe it's just bothering me. :)

Windows computers tend to also get the most overreaching invasive MDM / Endpoint Slowdown Software.

Can't say for Windows, but at work I manage a bunch of iPads with JAMF and it's really comfy to use.

I write applications for Linux, MacOS, and Windows but I use cross-compiling frameworks like Wails or Tauri to do so. If I write in Windows Forms (old Xamarin forms) then my application only works on Windows. MacOS is similar. All of my development occurs in Linux as a result.

There's a lot of work that is neither Windows software nor web. And much (most?) of that runs on Linux.

I find this whole conversation amusing. Growing up and going to school in the 2000s, Windows was the default choice, and I felt like I had to fight to use anything else. Now the conversation has reversed to some extent.

I, personally, would not chalk that up to a phenomenon. Operating System selection largely depends on the work you do paired with the industry you're in. Some extrapolations:

I work in systems engineering for web technology companies. Most of the applications I build run on Linux so it makes sense to write on a Unix like OS. I could use Linux or MacOS, but Apple has a strong preconfiguration and leasing pipeline so usually the companies I work for offer MacBooks Pros.

When I was building software in the US South I would have to look out for companies that were Windows shops because I don't do Windows systems engineering and there were an abundance of shops that did before the .NET Core rewrite that enabled you to run on Linux. Those shops would've definitely shipped me a Windows laptop. Anecdotally, I buy servers out of a DC in Houston and nearly all of them come with Windows Datacenter edition. Most of those companies fell into certain industries that didn't include what I typically worked in.

That's all to say, region can be roughly correlated, but it's not the actual reason. It largely has to do with who sold who the software stack they have trouble moving off of today which influences everything else.

Note that my comment was observational, I'm not saying companies should use Windows, and I'm not even talking about reasons for using one tech stack or another. I'm just reminding the parent that this association of Windows with "non-technical" is nonsense -- lots of extremely talented folks work on difficult and important problems and critical systems on Windows, targeting Microsoft stacks. Further, it seems likely that most software is written on Windows.

Yeap, that's all fair. I was mainly poking at your word choice of "phenomenon" because it can be reasoned. I'm not quite sure about your last sentence but that's an entirely different discussion with much more noise than signal to parse through.

"Phenomenon" just means "thing that can be observed". It doesn't need to mean something that is unusual or surprising.

Huh; according to Merriam-Webster the word has basically lost meaning: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/phenomenon

The first definition is how you and OP used it, the second is how I used it (exclusive of things that can be "sensed" as opposed to reasoned).

I think your usage is actually more like definition 3.

I both game and program on Windows. I don't know what people are crying about. I've got Docker. I've got WSL. I've got a high quality IDE (IntelliJ). Everything works and runs great.

I also run Debian at work and that's also perfectly good for writing code, just not gaming.

But no, I don't use Mail in Windows. I've been using Gmail since it came out in 2004....and was perfectly happy with it until just this second. I just found an email from 2004 wherein I had emailed myself a project, and Gmail has blocked it because it thinks it's a virus. The solution? Export the EML and open it in Mail on Windows. Funny.

Regarding techie people not using Windows, you’re living in a bubble.

John Carmack, ryg, people making demoscene, are the hackerest of the hackers, and they use Windows mostly. These people derive from the Wirthian pascal heritage. Unix people would not know.

> I don't know a single techie person who uses Windows (other than for gaming)

I'd say that Windows actually has some nice software, like MobaXTerm: https://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/ which in my eyes is better than Remmina or pretty much anything I've found on nix, short of just running the same thing on Wine.

WinSCP is also pretty cool, albeit nothing particularly special: https://winscp.net/eng/index.php

PowerToys (and other customization software) also make the OS feel more pleasant to use, especially with something like FancyZones which feels nicer to use than the window snapping in XFCE or Cinnamon: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/

WSL2 actually seems nice to use and even Hyper-V is pleasant.

The vertical taskbar in Windows 10 worked better out of the box than my current customized Cinnamon desktop.

Oh also the task manager is really nice and the Linux remake does tend to eat resources: https://github.com/KrispyCamel4u/SysMonTask

There's probably more nice things that someone can say about Windows and personally I don't mind doing development on it because most of my software works on it anyways (VSC, JetBrains IDEs, GitKraken, Docker, browsers etc.), but Linux distros do feel better for that particular type of work otherwise.

On the other hand, even with Proton, I still enjoy gaming on Windows more, far less of a hassle and curiously the graphics control panels seem to mostly only be available on Windows and something like CoreCtrl on Linux isn't always good enough (e.g. if I ever want to set a power limit for the GPU easily).

I really don't want to deal with Windows 11 though (which is inevitable because of updates and also work computer) and I have very few positive things to say about Windows Server, however. But hey, even .NET now works on RHEL/Ubuntu and other popular distros, so Microsoft tech stacks also feel decidedly more sane, in addition to something like C# just being a decent language in general.

That said, Thunderbird runs everywhere and does so well, so for me, it's the obvious choice.

Like the other replies are saying: you're in a bubble, like most Apple users.

MacOS needs third party apps to not be incredibly frustrating, and often the apps are subscription based. (Window management, clipboard history, and power management are the big ones - even if you go with a free option like I do, it's not good that the base OS is missing essential features in these areas.) There are many little annoying things that can't be easily disabled, like Apple Music launching every time you connect your bluetooth earbuds. There are incredibly bizarre UX choices, like not having "pin" in Finder be a right click option.

As for development, Windows + Powertoys can do everything MacOS can better, plus game (and game dev). For anything Linux I can use WSL2. I can natively develop any kind of software for literally any non-walled-garden platform on Windows (and use a VM if I'm forced to make an iOS app, god forbid). Why would I intentionally choose to limit what my computer can run and what development I can do?

I'm forced to use a Macbook for work, but would never use it if given the choice. MacOS is for people that value style over substance and non-technical people, just like everything else Apple.

> I'm forced to use a Macbook for work, but would never use it if given the choice. MacOS is for people that value style over substance and non-technical people, just like everything else Apple.

You’re obviously free to prefer whatever platform you please for whatever personal reasons you please, but the conclusion that macOS is for non-technical people is insanely ignorant.

I said "people that value style over substance and non-technical people," you appear to have read "non-technical people."

>ignorant

In fact the only techy people I know that enjoy MacOS seem to be ignorant about what they're missing. I've had multiple people be very surprised when I showed them the clipboard manager built into Windows and explained how insanely slow switching between windows over and over to copy and paste multiple things on MacOS feels without it. They genuinely had no idea because they, again, never leave their Apple bubble.

Like the iPhone the one thing Macbooks objectively have going for them is (overpriced) good hardware.

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