Five reasons why this developer won't switch to Mac

then goes on to say..

"Windows sucks. Period."

I've played with Macs, and have given Linux an honest shot, using it as my only OS for about 2 months. I am simply more productive developing PHP/MySQL on windows.

My working assumption is that these complainers must be heavy-duty C programmers, or some other variety of coder that uses a completely different set of tools than I do. Or that they maintain some older codebases which link against older, incompatible versions of various libraries, so they need to install multiple versions of half a dozen libraries and then carefully control how the linking is managed. Or they're former Gentoo users who are completely obsessed with the minutiae of how their tools are being compiled and want to be able to tweak their compiler optimizations on a fine-grained level.

Or maybe I just don't understand Debian well enough [1], and if I did I would fall in love with its build system and spend all my working life in a Linux VM.

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[1] I mean, I maintain Ubuntu servers, but that doesn't require a lot of understanding of the build system. By and large, aptitude or apt-get just work.

In 2006 I changed jobs and was fortunate enough to get a quad-core MacPro to work with. By that time I had already been an OSX user at home since Panther came out. Before Linux, I had the good fortune of being exposed to Nextstep on x86, PA-RISC, and even a SPARC 'tadpole' laptop. (Noisy beast!)

I don't miss using Linux, although I still love it. It has its own set of hassles. Most things do.

I respect this guy's choices. Obviously he feels the need to vent, and that's what the internet is for.

I, on the other hand, don't really care what machine I'm running on; I just happen to really like OS X.

That is just plain false. Installing packages (that either don't come with OS X or just override the installed version) is a piece of cake. Without Ports.

While one could argue the original article was biased towards OS X and not entirely objective, this rebuttal is so frustratingly incorrect on so many levels. Either the author is misinformed or too stubborn to care that they're mistaken.

This article wouldn't come off as a troll piece if there'd been some explanation as to why Linux was quantifiably better for their particular uses instead of merely spreading misinformation about OS X.

It's about the same as having the opinion "I like Chevy because Ford sucks!"

I call it the Segway argument. ;)

Marathon runners, the type that train obsessively for days at a time, fly to exotic high altitude locales to starve their bodies of oxygen, etc, and are at the absolute peak of human conditioning, are quite capable of running very long distances without much effort, in fact a case could reasonably made to say that they actually enjoy doing so.

Try sell one of those people a Segway.

It will have no tangible benefit aside from getting in the way of that person, and in fact just the idea of trying to sell one to that market shows the entire thing for the charade it is. It is not designed to service people like that.

The thing is that you can fairly make an argument that Marathon Runners like that are probably wasting their lives / time developing that degree of ability simply to do something like get from A to B with a reasonable level of rapidity. Thus something like a Segway can actually make sense because it isn't targeted at marathon runners, but a completely different type of person.

Now I don't want to be overly bragging, but I am only comfortable speaking for myself in this debate so that is what I am going to do. Once you've been using Linux since 1994, keeping well abreast of all the changes and benefits that have been added to the platform between then and now. Once you've mastered that environment so thoroughly that the regex flows from your fingertips as easily as a normal user's expectation of a tooltip hover on a pretty OS X widget. Once you've become accustomed to the almost limitless flexibility and control of the platform, and all the niggling problems and voodoo that one must occasionally confront when dealing with such a fluid platform slips so silently into the unconscious competence basket that you cannot personally even define the fact that it actually requires any competence at all without thinking about it really really hard.

Once you've got all that, the idea of someone making a cut down variant based on the BSD code base and making everything "just work" instantly, providing a contiguous user experience, doing a ton of things that basically all group up under the heading of "eliminating the need to acquire any indepth computer literacy at all", the idea of switching to a mac is as puzzling to you as the idea of the marathon runner picking up a Segway.

The critical thing to take away though, is that this is all value neutral, the marathon runner is not a hero, he probably wasted a ton of his life and time that could be spent better elsewhere acquiring the conditioning and abilities allowing him to accomplish the feats that he can. The same could be said of people in my situation with regards to computers, I am prepared to accept that if something like OS X had existed back when I wanted a "real computer" in 1994, it would indeed have been a waste of my time to develop all these skills. Further fair arguments could be made that I've wasted a ton of time developing all those skills now when you can get it "almost" as good just by paying a little premium on top of your average computer's cost. I get all that, I want to be as absolutely non-elitist about this as I can be. Taking all the above information into account I can totally see how it makes sense for normal people, and even up to a threshold some pretty extraordinary people even in this particular sphere to choose OS X as a platform.

That is definitely something that was in my blind spot not long ago, just as surely as Segways were an utterly bewildering concept to a marathon runner, but I'm aware of it now. The fact is of course that your average person is generally a lot more interested in stuff like walking around and fitness than advanced computer science, thus the relative success rates of Segway and Apple Computer.

But just because that market exists, is real, and has genuine value propositions for a large swathe of humankind, should not be taken as a reflection of it's value for everyone regardless of experience or situation. People like me will probably always prefer what we've developed this intensely powerful unconscious competence in, and everyone else will look at us and say it was a waste to do that, and although I don't agree with that position, I can at least see how the conclusion would be reached and accept it.

OK, people who make broad claims based on anecdotes and hand-waving are annoying, I agr--

> Macs are the best computers for a lot of people, but not for software developers.

Goddammit.

My opinion of this article? troll.

Another one drinks the koolaid.

1) If you like Macs, use a Mac. 2) If you like PCs, use a PC. 3) If you think one is better than the other, keep it to your damned self you obnoxious bastard