At least 9 out of every 10 software engineers I know does all their development on a mac. Because this sample is from my experience, it’s skewed to startups and tech companies. For sure, lots of devs outside those areas, but tech companies are a big chunk of the world’s developers.

So yea I would say Apple is a “serious development platform” just given how much it dominates software development in the tech sector in the US.

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OptionOfT 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I have the feeling a lot of people take Macs because the other option is a locked down Windows, and Linux is not offered.

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manithree 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This. I ran Linux at work until last year, when it was finally disallowed. I went with locked-down Mac over locked-down Windows.

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hparadiz 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The hardware for a Linux laptop right now is not great. Especially for an arm64 machine. Even if the hardware is good the chassis and everything else is typically plastic and shitty.

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c0balt 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That is a surprising sentiment. Most dell and Lenovo laptops work just fine and are usually of reasonably good build quality (non-plastic chassis etc.).

arm64 is however mostly bad. The only real contender for Linux laptops (outside of asahi) was Snapdragon's chips but the HW support there was lacking iirc.

	▲	invalidname 20 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		They give us Dell Linux machines from work. They suck so bad and we have so many problems. Overheating, camera is terrible, performance is bad relatively to the huge weight of the device. Everything is a huge step down from Macs. Whenever I see Linux people comparing Linux and Mac I'm amazed at the audacity. They are not in the same league. Not by a mile. Even the CLI is more convenient on the Mac which is truly amazing to me.

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herecomesthepre 40 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

What happened to all the love for Framework?

The honeymoon of Lego-brick replaceable USB ports is over?

	▲	linguae 20 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I have a personal Framework 13 and a work-issued MacBook Pro. I love Framework’s mission of providing user-serviceable hardware; we need upgradable, serviceable hardware. However, the battery life on my MacBook Pro is dramatically better than on my Framework. Moreover, Apple Silicon offers excellent performance on top of its energy efficiency. While I use Windows 11 on my Framework, I prefer macOS. Additionally, today’s sky-high RAM and SSD prices have caused an unexpected situation: Apple’s inflated prices for RAM and SSD upgrades don’t look that bad in comparison to paying market prices for DIMMs and NVMe SSDs. Yes, the Framework has the advantage of being upgradable, meaning that if RAM and SSD prices decrease, then upgrades will be cheaper in the future, whereas with a Mac you can’t (easily) upgrade the RAM and storage once purchased. However, for someone who needs a computer right now and is willing to purchase another one in a few years, then a new Mac looks appealing, especially when considering the benefits of Apple Silicon.

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gambiting 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>>At least 9 out of every 10 software engineers I know does all their development on a mac

I work in video games, you know, industry larger than films - 10 out of 10 devs I know are on Windows. I have a work issued Mac just to do some iOS dev and I honestly don't understand how anyone can use it day to day as their main dev machine, it's just so restrictive in what the OS allows you to do.

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array_key_first an hour ago | parent | next [-]

It makes sense that you use Windows in a video game company. We use windows as well at work and it's absolutely awful for development. I would really prefer a Linux desktop, especially since we exclusively deploy to Linux.

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st3fan 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Weird .. macOS is still completely open is my experience. Can you give an example?

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gambiting 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I compile a tool we use, send it to another developer, they can't open it without going through system settings because the OS thinks it's unsafe. There is no blanket easy way to disable this behaviour.

We also inject custom dlibs into clang during compilation and starting with Tahoe that started to fail - we discovered that it's because of SIP(system integrity protection). We reached out to apple, got the answer that "we will not discuss any functionality related to operation of SIP". Great. So now we either have to disable SIP on every development machine(which IT is very unhappy about) or re-sign the clang executable with our own dev key so that the OS leaves us alone.

	▲	10000truths 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		If SIP is kicking in, it sounds like you're using the clang that comes with Apple's developer tools. Does this same issue occur with clang sourced from homebrew, or from LLVM's own binary releases?
	▲	fragmede 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		If it's being sent to another developer then asking them to run xattr -rd com.apple.quarantine on the file so they can run it doesn't seem insurmountable. I agree that it's a non-starter to ask marketing or sales to do that, but developers can manage. Having to sign and then upload the binary to Apple to notarize is also annoying but you put it in a script and go about your day. But Apple being "completely open", it is not.

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fortran77 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I work as a consultant for the position, navigation, and timing industry and 10 of 10 devs were on Windows. Before that I worked for a big hollywood company and while scriptwriters and VP executive assistants had Macs, everyone technical was on Windows. Movies were all edited and color graded on Windows.

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herecomesthepre an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Webshitters don't "engineer" anything, it's insulting you would insinuate that.

Anyone who watched the Artemis landing yesterday would have been keen to notice all the Windows PCs in use at Mission Control — nearly all hosting remote Linux applications.

Not a Mac in sight.

They were using VLC on Windows in space.

If all the Macs in the world disappeared tomorrow, everything essential would somehow continue unabated.