Agreed. It's not that Snow Leopard was some magic release that can never be bettered, it's that it has never been bettered. I can't think of any new features since then that I really value in OS X.
there was a day where I never wanted to touch Windows again
I switched from Windows to OS X back in 2006 thinking I would run Boot Camp for Windows 90% of the time. Boy was I wrong. But nowadays, if the Surface Book trackpad was as good as the Macbook's (it might be, I don't know) and cygwin was better integrated into the OS, I would be very tempted to switch back.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-surface-book-solving-...
I ended up purchasing a non-Retina MacBook Pro, in large part because of the trackpad. The click on the old 2012-era trackpad is sharp, solid, satisfying & deliberate, no accidental clicks.
Well said. For nearly a decade, every OSX was clearly better than the previous. The GUI kept getting more efficient, bugs disappeared.
Now when there's a new OSX version, my first thought is, "Oh no, what's going to break?"
IMHO, an Android programmer in particular will find OSX more comfortable and supportive than Windows because Android Studio and drivers and stuff mostly _just work_ on a Mac.
Example: get adb to talk to a Kindle Fire from your windows machine and then do that same thing from your Mac
Example: install genymotion on your Windows machine and fiddle around with VirtualBox and what have you, and then install genymotion on your Mac
Example: use something like GitBash (Android devs just have to use Git a lot) on Windows and then compare that experience to using a real Unix command line on OSX
Example: watch Tor Norbye give a talk about Android Studio productivity tips and notice that he can't help but give you Apple keyboard shortcuts.
Macs appear to be what most Android programming expert-types and the Android dev team itself use, day to day.
Android dev just seems to go a bit smoother on Macs than on Windows.
For me, if I'm missing something, its a pacman or AUR search away. If I need development features of anything it exists as a -git repo as well, and I can super fast insert my patches and get what I need immediately. No updates or any of this insanity stand in my way, and my systems been stable for almost three years since I built it, I just subscribe to the Arch announcements mailing list for major updates that might cause problems. We just got Linux 4.4 yesterday, and I booted today and kept on rolling as per usual.
Personal opinion. Most Linux GUIs are awful to me.
"both you cannot fix yourself"
Moot point, as the vast majority of people, even tech oriented people, wouldn't do that if they could.
"and both get in the way all the time of what you want to do."
Again, completely depends on your personal workflow.
"For me, if I'm missing something, its a pacman or AUR search away."
Mac App Store, Fink, or Homebrew.
"If I need development features of anything it exists as a -git repo as well"
Git works just fine on OS X.
"No updates or any of this insanity stand in my way"
Except for, what you just mentioned, which are updates.
"We just got Linux 4.4 yesterday, and I booted today and kept on rolling as per usual."
Same thing happens with OS X updates.
Never used Genymotion, rather HAXM or real devices.
There are quite a few nice GUIs for Git, also no one has forced me to use Git so far.
I will become productive with Android Studio the day they are able to match what I already had with Ant, ndk-build and Eclipse ADT/CDT in terms of IDE/build performance and C++ support.
Keyboard shortcuts are the least that I care about in Studio.
Genymotion is miles and miles ahead of HAXM. Real Devices are best, though. But using real devices is much easier on OS X, due to not having to even think about drivers. I had to use Windows at a big corporate gig for a while, and that was one of the absolute worst parts of it: drivers.
"There are quite a few nice GUIs for Git, also no one has forced me to use Git so far."
It's pretty pervasive. Just about any major library is in git. Most projects are using git, too.
Usually the projects are SDK only.
My current customer is using subversion and the third party projects, if any, use the internal Maven repository or vendoring for the C++ libraries.
I don't have any intention to switch platforms and still think the third party applications available on Windows are, while available in huge quantities, mostly subpar and terribly designed, however the core parts Microsoft delivers with the OS really, really impressed. Very solid.
In fact, for me, I can honestly say that OS X has almost strictly regressed in terms of my day-to-day experience. Spotlight now covers up way too much of the screen for almost no gain; if I'd wanted that, I'd have just used Alfred. Mission Control is still not as powerful and flexible as Expose + Spaces, and now it even goes so far as to hide desktop thumbnails even on my dual 27" monitor setup. Seriously?
What's most shocking to me is how much Windows has caught up from a UX perspective. I have Windows 10 on my (primarily gaming-oriented) desktop. Since I don't use the desktop for much programming, I almost never find myself wishing that it was running OS X instead. That's a real blow to the magical grip that OS X once held over me. Cortana is just as good as spotlight -- better, even -- and it manages to be much more space efficient as well. Windows Explorer is so much more useful than the bafflingly overly simplistic Finder. On Windows, if I want to tile windows, I can -- get this -- just drag them to the side, top, or any of the four corners. On OS X, I have to either fiddle with their impressively clunky split-screen full-screen app disaster or use a third-party tool like Spectacle or BetterTouchTool.
I could go on, but I'll leave it at this: there was a day where I never wanted to touch Windows again because I felt OS X was so much better. Now I find myself only really sticking to OS X for two reasons: (1) it still has better touchpad interaction on a laptop; (2) it's still based on Unix so I prefer it for programming.