| ▲ | Brainspackle 6 hours ago |
| I've been a software engineer for 25 years, doing Linux stuff at startups and big companies (the biggest even). In all my time as a software engineer, I've seen maybe 3 people who didn't use a MacBook Pro for work. Apple makes the bulk of its money from tech companies and schools and they cater very well to both. If it stops being Unix-like, they lose the thing they make the most money from. They are smarter than that. |
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| ▲ | torben-friis 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| I don't think apple makes the bulk from professionals at all, the iphone is their flagship product and their laptop line has been expanding towards casual markets with budget models. |
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| ▲ | jeremyjh 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Right but in this thread it is pretty clear we are talking about the money they make from MacOS. | | |
| ▲ | kbolino an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | They don't make any money on macOS anymore. You get it preinstalled on their computers, you can't buy it separately, you can't install it on other computers, and major upgrades are free. | | |
| ▲ | jeremyjh an hour ago | parent [-] | | It is a part of the computer that people pay for. This is like saying they don't get any money from Apple Silicon because its already installed on the motherboard. | | |
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| ▲ | kibwen 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The money they make from MacOS is a footnote compared to the money they make from phone hardware, the app store transaction tax, and ads. To a first approximation, the only reason that Apple cares about MacOS is so that people can make iOS apps. | | |
| ▲ | jasomill 27 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | This is a poor approximation, as there would be no need for such an extensive Mac product lineup if this were true. The Mac mini and one laptop product line with two or three sizes would be more than sufficient, and continuing development of first-party Mac applications like Logic and FCP would serve little purpose. | |
| ▲ | 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | jmcs 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Backend developers are already conditioned to use Linux VMs when developing in Mac OS. |
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| ▲ | splittydev 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | And so are developers on Linux. 99.5% of your backend stuff will run just fine on macOS without any modification, but it's been a good practice for a long time now to run stuff in containers (Docker/OrbStack/podman/etc.) in order to have a reproducible environment free of contamination. My development process in macOS is basically no different than it was on Linux. |
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| ▲ | pjmlp 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I bet you are located in US. |
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| ▲ | sneak 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| You’re in a bubble. Windows is still huge, especially in middling companies that dictate it and standard HP/Dell/Lenovo hardware for all 3k staff. It’s insanely common. |
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| ▲ | orf 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | His point isn’t that it’s common, it’s that a unix-like environment is a key selling point. Given that Windows made WSL in an attempt to capture developer mindshare, that tends to support his comment | | |
| ▲ | 9dev 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | You still end up in uncanny valley often enough, with commands that are missing, or working unexpectedly differently. It often feels like macOS could be made so much better for developers, but Apple just doesn't care because people buy their devices anyway. | | |
| ▲ | spacedcowboy 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It’s not that. It’s that their lawyers won’t let the engineering side distribute gnu tools. Period. At Apple, if you even use GPL tools in your workflow you have to seek approval, and most often there’s pushback of “why won’t this (alternative that isn’t GPL) work ?” Their lawyers aren’t stupid, they understand the GPL and its limits, but they’re simply doing a risk assessment- which one is less risky, the GPL variant or the BSD. For a corporation, that’s generally BSD. | |
| ▲ | pjmlp 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The problem is that being a developer is not a synonymous with UNIX. | |
| ▲ | jeremyjh 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | In deeply saddens me to think that there is a developer who has not installed gnutils and put them earlier in the PATH. The remaining differences are related more to systems stuff - managing daemons with launchd for example. These aren't really a distraction day-to-day. | | |
| ▲ | jonhohle 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It really is that simple. No different from a BSD or even a non-GNU (busybox, etc.) Linux distribution. If you like GNU tools, use them. | |
| ▲ | 9dev 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It’s a computer. I can make a computer go beep if I want, that is not the issue. The fact that someone who didn’t grow up at the time when open source was an idealistic concept instead of free support to corporations needs to learn about the gnutils and how to install them with homebrew is what makes me sad. Why do we seriously not have a command-line package manager on macOS yet? Windows has one by now. It’s just sad to me that you need a manual checklist of post-setup steps to turn a Mac into a useful machine for software development. | | |
| ▲ | jeremyjh 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | I don't think you have to grow up in some idyllic era that never existed. Its more like you type 'ls', notice that its total crap, and google it. | | |
| ▲ | 9dev an hour ago | parent [-] | | The point I was making was that knowing what GNU means in the first place probably requires some cultural background that many people lack, especially younger ones. | | |
| ▲ | jeremyjh an hour ago | parent [-] | | Right, and the point I'm making is that you can learn this from Google once you notice there is a difference from how common commands work on Linux and MacOS. You don't need to know about GNU, you just have to wonder why its different. |
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