I understand that it all depends but curious to see where most of the HN community gets their stuff done.
Of course, if you just happen to love everything Apple has baked inextricably into their OS... then awesome, and you'll certainly be happy! For the rest of us, though, the flexible, stable, useful devil we know is likely a better choice.
After hearing for so long how great OSX was I was shocked to find out how poor the experience was compared to Unity. Go figure.
I'd switch back _today_ but all distros have very bad support for the latest retina MBP. A few years ago I might have done it anyway but honestly one of the reasons I was so open to switching to OSX was that I just feel worn down by the constant battles with hardware issues in Linux. It is better than it used to be but still sucks and the last thing I want to do is dive into a known bad situation.
Sad.
OS X is (in my opinion) miles ahead of Unity at present, which is unsurprising considering Unity is so new -- I imagine some of your discomfit may just come from unfamiliarity. OS X is definitely not for everyone, but I certainly wouldn't say it's poor! Just different, and I appreciate the GUI is frustratingly inflexible if you're used to Linux--but at least that gives it a sense of consistency, so you do get something for it.
If you'd like to give Linux a try on your MBPR, you do have options, e.g. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/MacBookPro_Retina Agreed that support isn't great right now, but it's getting better all the time.
OS X probably has a bigger advantage for front-end and mobile dev, though.
If your decision is based purely on aesthetics, given enough time, I'm sure you can find a GUI for Linux that you like more than OSX. While OSX gives you a GUI with no fuss, the customizability of a lot of desktop environments for Linux means you can tune it to exactly what you want, whether you want more graphical flare, or less (for the OpenBox folks out there--represent!).
But occasionally I need to work with color-calibrated monitors for photo processing and I have yet to try out if Linux and ICC get along fine and if there's a chance to hook my Spyder calibrator without booting to Win or Mac. Also need to check if CR2 raw files in Gimp is something that I can build my workflow on.
Additionally, with linux I'll miss some music creation with a DAW and a bunch of VST plugins. That forces me to keep multibooting to Windows when choosing Linux.
With OS X it would be a single env.
Also there is this relatively new colord stuff which gnome seems to support (I think only loading profiles)...
VST... well, it's a "standard" but it uses compiled native code. What can you expect? There are some projects like festige/fsthost/dssi-vst that try to integrate with wine. When I tried it I got very mixed results but then I did not try with a realtime kernel and additionally I only tried it with the default priority of jackd run as user. I was told it would work much better on low latency systems. Ubuntu Studio is apparently still a thing, so there are probably an number of easy to setup distribution with this stuff enabled. But yes, the VST situation is bad.
People choose OS X because of its design though, not because of its aesthetics. "You can't put lipstick on a pig" and all that. The trouble with Linux is that there's no consistency in UIs between various apps, and skinning just makes things even less consistent.
I'm in your scientific computing category, and I'm using OS X as my main machine right now--my only complaints are the occasional missing package from Homebrew. I suspect I might prefer Ubuntu in that regard.
If that was a polite way of saying "many missing packages", that's a different story.
And agreed--this is a silly name for an OS, but it looks pretty cool at least! Though sadly it seems like they don't have a non-Bittorrent download option, so I can't try it out -- if anyone knows of a mirror, that'd be great.
I should have thought to search for it that way, given that I know that pronunciation...
I have heard great things about CrunchBang in the past, actually. Neat. I used Fluxbox at one point in time, so OpenBox shouldn't be too big of a change. It's also been a few years, so re-learning things would be nice as well.
The ease of use and mostly-open-source aspects of OSX are great, but recently, Apple (and Google, and...) has been doing enough bad stuff that I need to swing back to as much open source as possible.
The most recent situation: Apple still ships Ruby 1.8.7 by default, which is no longer receiving security patches as of June. And in order to compile Ruby 2.0, a new OpenSSL must be compiled because that is old. And in order to compile them, you need the compiler tools or XCode.
And if you want to use eliptic key crypto, you need to install homebrew, install a tap, and then recompile OpenSSH...
Going back to my XMonad will be pretty enjoyable.
They all have their own unique little annoying-quirks and favourable strengths. I've found that when your environment is say, Sublime Text + a browser + a command line, the outer OS matters surprisingly little.
cmd.exe in its turn lacks a portion of basic functionality, like tabs, for example. A 3rd party apps, like Console, can help solve this problem, but in its turn, they have their own issues. Console, for example can have noticeable delays when rendering output.
Plus the machines themselves are the best damn laptops I've ever used.
Software developers aren't afraid of changing UI. (In fact, they usually are the ones inflicting that upon others.) So, it shouldn't matter where your menus are, how you switch between applications, how the file browser displays files.
The technical differences between operating systems are huge, but they all support the same day-to-day features: they all multitask reasonably well, they all have or support reasonable filesystems, they all support a lot of different kinds of hardware (and most of what you're likely to need to use).
Worst-case scenario, you can fall back on multiboot or virtualization to fill in a few gaps.
Software developers spend most of their time in just a few applications: a text editor or IDE of some sort, a web browser, maybe an ssh client. There are perfectly usable options for each of those on each operating system.
So ... seriously, what does it matter? I have a mild preference for Debian/KDE, but I could do most of my work on MacOS (in fact, I did in the past) or Windows, with just a couple of days of tweaking and setup. The only possible spot where Windows might fall down a bit for me would be in supporting a locally-hosted LAMP setup, and even then there's WampServer (http://www.wampserver.com/en/).
I highly recommend using a tiling window manager (I'm happy with xmonad). No more resizing windows with the mouse, things simply work. That I'm on a dual monitor setup is a big plus for that as well.
For me I had to vote for all of them:
Linux - 70% - Development and experimentation
OSX - 20%- Development and Leisure browsing
Windows 10% - .Net development or running something that wont run elsewhere
Other - Something I'm playing around with, FreeBSD, Unix etc.
Unless you count my time at work, then Windows is much higher, as I'm forced to use it there.
So to me, OSX was the only clear alternative to have a native *nix OS with all of the app support.
I would go back to Linux in a heartbeat if I had the app support. And wine isn't an option either, I don't want to spend countless hours configuring crap and having apps crash on me.
One thing I never did was experiment more with windows and Cygwin.
I started using Ubuntu back when the quip was that it's the Swahili word for "Can't install Debian." I used LXDE for a while while Unity was in its bumptious youth, but I like Unity now.
BUT if I know I won't have to use an IDE for a meeting, I'll take only an Android tablet. With the latest updates it is within spitting distance of being a complete office work machine. Offline editing of Drive documents would complete the picture.
FWIW I don't do anything serious with any of my machines, so any OS is fine. I have Fedora on the desktop, and Vista with Kali on the Thinkpad. I had OS X snow Leopard until that computer died.
Btw, is there any alternative to Autohotkey on Linux/OS X? Cannot imagine how to use any desktop GUI without it anymore.
Edit: Oh and I got an Android phone that also runs Debian. Perhaps it's interesting to add iOS, Windows Phone and Android to the list? You can vote multiple options anyway.
There is no such thing as the best OS there is only one that suits your needs. Anyone who says Win or Mac or Linux sucks are just dumb.
I prefer the dev environment of OSX and Linux to Windows and the UIs of Linux and Windows to OSX.
I have both installed in both my PCs (Desktop and Laptop) and I boot into whatever I need to do the work (Or gaming) I need.
Although lately I rarely boot Windows, and if I do: It's for playing some games.
The package manager is just so sweet.
I'd love to try all out but OS X with a MBP is a rather expensive for just trying out. Borrowing for a weekend is out of question, it takes more time to see if one can settle and hate to see the face of my friend after returning his reconfigured MBP :-)
1. OS X is the clear choice for a desktop system that just works and has all the power of Unix underneath. I've used various Unix desktops in the past and they all had one thing in common: You had to spend a lot of time to get things working to some kind of acceptable level, you had to spend more time keeping them that way and in the end you often get "you cannot do that" or "Software X isn't available, you have to use Wine/a VM/an inferior clone". I also use Skype, despite it's security issues and uglified Mac client, because it's the easiest to explain to clients[1]. I haven't tried using Skype on Linux myself, but I've heard things like "Sure, lemme just swap audio drivers and reboot real quick". Err, really?
2. Applications. On OS X you get some standard things that you may need, like Photoshop and Skype and a mail client along with a great choice of text editors. You also get Pages and Keynote[2], both of which are fantastic when you need to write documentation or a presentation and have them look effortlessly pretty and export to all kinds of file formats. On top of that, there are some pretty awesome apps from small and mid-size developers than you can get only on OS X. First and foremost of these is OmniGraffle, which has not only saved me tons of time but earnt me several "wow, I didn't know Visio can do that" comments (It can't). Oh, and if you can't avoid dealing with BigCorp clients, you can get Microsoft Office for those pesky .doc files they insist on sending you that always look a bit wonky in LubricateOffice.
3. You still have X11 for Wireshark (that's all I ever use it for anymore).
4. Time machine is a convenient zero-setup-required backup that will save you time when you screwed up and need that file back. It's seriously fun to restore a file with it compared to any other backup software I've ever used ("please insert tape labeled .. into slot 7").
5. Same for FileVault (full disk encryption).
6. I don't know what you do, but if you ever decide to pick up OS X or IOS development, you already have everything you need.
7. The font rendering is oh so very pretty.
8. If you happen to have any iDevices, they'll shut up and sync.
9. The hardware looks nice, is well designed (in practical terms) and when it breaks you get pretty good service. And Retina is awesome.
I guess it all boils down to how much time you want to spend fucking around with your system instead of getting work done. Note that you still can fuck around with OS X to a great extent (GeekTool), it's just you don't have to. Same reason I use FreeBSD (instead of OS X or Linux) for servers and Windows for gaming. You can certainly get some Windows games to run in Wine or learn how to navigate GNU info to read docs, but that's time and frustration I'd rather not inflict on myself.
[1] "Just give me your Skype username. Don't have one? Click that." is a lot less trouble than "Install this SIP client and then open a port in your firewall and follow this 35 page instruction manual". I wish it wasn't so, but it is.
[2] iWork costs a few extra coins but is well worth it.
I use Skype on Ubuntu 12.10 32-bit version (Metacity like 11.x default) it works pretty well without having to manually fix drivers etc. It does work for voice chat without issue.
LibreOffice works well on Ubuntu, Windows, and probably OS X for those pesky .doc files.
* Buggy updates. About 1 in 3 kernel upgrades produce a crash or hang on bootup. About a quarter of those that survive booting fail to recognize my network card. A smaller fraction of updates delete features from my desktop, and some give me a broken X that won't load. Then there's the annoyance that the upgrades often spend half a gig of bandwidth; I'm glad I'm not on dial-up anymore, or in a rural area.
* Uncancelable fsck. Windows does not randomly keep me off my own computer for an hour at a time when I'm most interested in getting some work done.
* Games. I don't even mean mass-market games. Wine for old Win9x games is a crapshoot. The Linux version of Adobe's flash player underperforms and the open source version doesn't perform. On games that are playable, the sound is a half-second off.
* Opportunity. Windows came with my new computer.
YMMV, but these are my reasons.
Linux finally getting unofficial Netflix support was the last thing holding me back. I have three iPhones, two iPads, and an Apple TV but Macs are too expensive, especially when you already own a PC.