The Comeback of the Mac | Hacker News Reader

The Comeback of the Mac

muensteraner.net

7 pointspulmo13 comments

You can't explain the comeback of the Mac if you cling to the assumption that Microsoft products are cheaper and better for getting "real work" done. (rendered here as "tool for a specific task" vs. "leisure".)

You can get a Mac desktop for $600 and a laptop for $1000-2000, and the prices are going down every year. These aren't cheapo versions of Apple's more expensive offerings, either, they're the real deal, with better hardware design than pretty much any PC laptop. And they run Windows.

How cheap do people expect a computer to be?

A cheap notebook would be around 350 bucks. You can get "real work" done with them (like with any Macbook) but it's no fun to use them in the living room on the sofa.

There's a total opportunity here for a third operating system to make a desktop play - but no one seems to be interested in doing one.

Ubuntu? Window of opportunity has passed & Canonical doesn't seem interested in desktop market.

Chrome OS? Awesome as a browser+netbook, but a bit limited for some people's tastes.

Really, if a company like Google had been able to produce a true and full operating system, with Ubuntu/Linux extensibility and the beauty of Mac OS/ChromeOS, they could have come up with a winner ... but it hasn't happened yet.

It's because of VMware Fusion and Parallels. Simple.

My next system will probably be a Mac primarily running Windows 7 or 8 where I'm currently the most invested. The ability to have both in the same box justifies the extra cost of a Mac to me. My older XP music production system is actually a VMware Fusion virtual machine running on an older MacBook and used mostly for the XP apps.

Both integrate flawlessly on my home network where I use TeamViewer to access them from what is currently my main Windows machine.

Actually it's because of Virtualbox. I just bought a Macbook Pro a couple of weeks ago to do some iOS native app development and Virtualbox is one of the first things that I installed. I already have my Ubuntu VM and my Windows 7 VM up and running, ready for when I need to do some work that is OS specific.

Not to say that there is anything wrong with VMWare or Parallels, its just that I happen to like Virtualbox and have used it on Linux and Windows as well.

I was originally planning on getting a used machine but when I looked at the prices of new ones and compared prices, the difference was just too small to take the risks of non-warranty hardware.

Silly me. I didn't even know that Virtualbox existed for the Mac. I too like it a lot in the windows environment and use it to play with Chrome OS. I'll have to give the Mac version a look. Thanks.

It's because of VMware Fusion and Parallels. Simple.

That's not the only reason, and perhaps not the primary reason.

My wife made the jump to Mac four years ago. Yes, we bought VMware Fusion so she could run her "must have" Windows apps, too.

Fast forward four years, and she's discovered those "must have" Windows apps aren't "must have" after all. We've found Mac replacements for ALL of them.

No more VMware Fusion. No more Windows.

I think it's because a MacBook is a high quality device, and you can install other OSes on relatively pain free.

Also OSX covers the bases well, both for regular users and developers. One noteworthy group that are left out are the gamers.

I don't know what your pain threshold is, but installing & running any blend of Linux on a recent Macbook is not exactly a fun time.

For the first time in forever I have a Mac as my primary work computer. (Granted with Windows on VM for a few things) I converted from Wintel at home back to Mac about 3 years ago, and I was a relatively later adopter.

I would bet the success of the iphone and ipad play into this as well.

FWIW: I'm a developer and after being on a Macbook Pro with a Retina display for over a year I can't imagine working on anything else.

Also, don't forget the ecosystem.

    Want to buy a song? iTune, 1 click and start listening
    Want to install development tool? brew install
    Want to install other tools? brew cask install
    Want to buy software? App store, 1 click
    Want to listen to music on your big ass speaker? Airplay, click and done

I don't believe that things are so simple. Some things are not in a repo like Homebrew or MacPorts. Personally I chose to use MacPorts for UNIX world tools. I installed STS Eclipse from their site. Same with AppCode. There are other things that you need to go and hunt for.

Even on Linux, which has arguably the best package repo systems, you still need to go to upstream for important tools because the distros lag behind.

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