For folks considering the switch, I highly recommend considering linux as well. I've used both macOS and ubuntu as a development environment, and bug wise they are on par, but linux really excels at having a true "native" development environment. Docker without a weird VM, true bash, etc.

Just a minor nitpick, macOS has true bash. It just doesn't have the GNU coreutils, instead it uses the BSD-based equivalents.

And yeah, they suck a lot[1], but there's a way to fix if you use Homebrew: https://stackoverflow.com/a/57973942/8280773

[1] Performance-wise and also when you take into account that most shell scripts/tutorials on the internet are written with a GNU userland in mind.

As I remember it, this is the whole reason OS X became the de facto standard for developers in the first place, consumer-grade windowing and device drivers coupled with a familiar development environment.

zsh has replaced bash as the default shell, btw.

macOS has a 12+ year old bash. Also, even with Homebrew patching up Apple's neglect, coreutils behaves differently under a Darwin kernel than Linux. A repeat source of aggravation for myself is the behavior of 'ps'.

that's not due to the kernel, that's because it's bsd ps instead of gnu ps. sed is the one that gives me the most irritation, there's basically no way to write useful cross-OS sed scripts.

To suggest that “bug wise“ it is the same between Mac and Linux is a bit of a stretch. I work in a team where the developers are mostly split between Mac and Ubuntu. Guess which ones often have problems joining zoom meetings or attaching their machines to a projector for a presentation? There are a lot of things that you generally don’t have to worry about much if you’re using a Mac. I’m not gonna say that one of these is better than the other, but to suggest they have equivalency wrt common scenarios is a bit strange.

Also, Mac is a certified UNIX environment, it is native.

I think the corollary is "consider Ubuntu, but still don't skimp on hardware". Buy a proper laptop that ships with Ubuntu, buy a proper connector cable if you need one, etc.

I don't think paying more for hardware significantly changes the problem that was brought up.

I think what he is saying is, don't buy a cheap-ass Dell that runs Windows 10S, then expect to be development powerhouse where all the hardware works properly. He is suggesting buying a developer-oriented laptop that is designed and supported to be running Linux. You'll have less weird hardware quirks that way.

You can buy a $1000 laptop and still run into issues where your computer won't connect to a projector or a major application refuses to support your platform.

Yep, that's exactly what I meant - and peripherals too. I'm sure a big reason Apple products don't have problems video calling or connecting to projectors is high-end hardware, and I don't think the difference between MacOS and Ubuntu on comparable hardware is anywhere near as striking as their reputations would have you believe.

I really, highly doubt that. Autodetecting and using proper settings for a newly-discovered display device (projector) is fundamentally a software consideration, not hardware: the hardware into which you connect the display is capable of talking to it (maybe not at ideal resolution depending on specs, but whatever), but the OS needs to discover, detect, and configure the new connection properly.

The same is true for Zoom: things like accelerated video streaming are universally supported on laptop GPUs, but software support is spotty for some apps/OSes. Things like screen sharing are 100% software-side.

While I'd love to use a Linux workstation (and often do), it's simply not there yet in those areas. That has nothing to do with "high-end hardware" and everything to do with less robust software support than many alternatives--including MacOS.

I guess you could make the case that because MacOS has to support fewer kinds of hardware, they can spend more time on making software support robust, but I'm neither convinced of that argument nor convinced that's what you meant by your post.

You'd think that, but once I replaced my €5 AliExpress connector cable by a proper one, suddenly I haven't had any issues with projectors any more.

Likewise, if you use an underpowered laptop, or one for which Ubuntu doesn't have proper drivers, you're going to have a hard time using Zoom.

I'm not saying that you'll never have issues (which I'm sure holds for MacOS as well), or even that you might not have slightly more issues than on MacOS (see your last paragraph), but things are definitely not as bad as comments online would have you believe, because many of those can be ascribed to issues like I mentioned above.

> Guess which ones often have problems joining zoom meetings

As a linux user, I'd like to say that I've seen that happen just as often with OSX users on my team. I think that's just Zoom's shitty app. But I do agree about peripheral hardware issues plaguing Linux. Bluetooth headphones are still such a hassle on Ubuntu 20.04.

I think it's crazy to seriously consider using an OS where something as basic as Bluetooth is a hassle.

Bluetooth has never not been a hassle in my experience - and that goes for Android, Windows, Linux, OS X, iOS. There’s always something with the device or driver.

This goes especially for audio.

I’m going to guess that Apple peripherals + Apple OS on Apple hardware is actually hassle-free but then what’s the point of a standard.

Bluetooth in general isn't a hassle. Bluetooth audio is a little bit of a hassle in the sense that there's a workaround that you have to do.

This is definitely the largest drawback of Linux in general - support for peripherals and common communication/presentation software is really lacking. If I had a dollar for every time I had to muck around to get my headphones to work on Ubuntu, I wouldn't be posting here.

> support for peripherals and common communication/presentation software is really lacking

Well if peripherals vendor and "common communication/presentation software" didn't test on Linux, whose drawback is it now? That being said, I have used the following without any trouble on Linux: Slack, Discord, Teamviewer, Zoom, BBB and BlueJeans. Vendors don't put enough investment into testing for Linux due to comparatively low usage numbers - but that doesn't mean that it is a "drawback" of the OS.

As for hardware, as Vinnl explains above the way to go is buy certified hardware. Ubuntu and Red Hat folks certify a bunch of Dell and Lenovo laptops to work with Linux. I use Ubuntu on a Dell XPS 13 and I don't need to do ANY extra setup. Things just work (TM) - including my Sennheiser and Jabra headphones.

Seems like a trade-off based on my experiences. On Macs you'll get a less bugs in proprietary, user-oriented apps (like Zoom). On Linux you'll get a less bugs on free software apps, developer tooling and server side apps. Though I think it mostly comes down to where you spend most of your time and what you are working on.

To equate lack of peripheral support to "bugs" is hilarious.

I feel like GIMP and Inkscape have finally caught up to the Adobe offerings. It was my reason for not switching for so long. But over the past year I did and I just-- wow. GIMP in particular is just really good now.

I think WSL2 is wonderful, I use it on my primary development machine. Docker doesn't have as many pain points as it used to, and I generally find that I can get around the OS without too much issue, and the new Windows Terminal App helps a ton (its no iTerm2, but its better than anything else I can find)

I still miss macOS, so much, because

- Mac Software I was accustomed to using (and it was lot) is no longer available to me (don't discount this problem when suggesting switching)

- I had to customize Windows 10 a lot, (many hours of work) to emulate native features of macOS I personally can't live without (including remapping keys, which turns out not to be trivial on Windows)

- I miss the general UI polish of macOS. Windows is...ugly in a lot of places.

- I miss Finder, and I've tried so many file explorer alternatives and nothing comes close

- Windows 10 can't seem to ever remember my screen layout for my applications. I had to resort to an application to do this for me. Drives me nuts

- macOS has way better HiDPI support (I have 3 4K monitors)

It ain't trivial, is what I'm saying.

Don't get me started on Linux, I loved Pop OS conceptually, but the support for basic things, like natural scrolling, was completely lacking, and I had to resort to all kinds of hacks to get a desktop semi functional. Not to mention, a lot of Linux 'add on' packages are abandonware and would break constantly when updating to new versions, and for basic things, like dealing with scroll direction, I had to edit files in a terminal, which I just found annoying. It just wasn't a polished out of the box experience. Don't get me started with it not recognizing adapters properly and issues with GPUs. macOS is alot of things, but they take 'just works' more seriously than any other operating system I've ever used.

Honestly, I find it incredibly odd that companies that have more manpower than Apple (you'd be shocked how little manpower they devote to some things) can't manage to pull off the polish of macOS UI

WSL2 has no built-in background services. That's a huge issue for me. And I don't have 100% confidence in it. It has many little bugs on each builds.

Why do you miss Finder? Search feature? Preview.app? Opposite to you, I never like it.

If you didn't buy into Finder and other built-in apps on macOS, it can be easier to see less value, that is true, but effectually I feel like that dismisses perfectly reasonable expectations a macOS user has about using a platform. Frankly, Apple hasn't given as much love to macOS over the last 5-6 years in particular as they do their other platforms (in some ways, justifiable, otherwise, its frustrating) however, even with their basically trickle of updates to the desktop platform in that time, no other desktop platform could even match them on baseline functionality and user experience. Even though I'm certain Microsoft has more people working on Windows 10 than Apple has working on macOS. Even Ubuntu with its open source contributors likely dwarfs Apple's resources on this, yet nobody comes close to matching the user experience to me.

As for software, I miss Finder because I felt the interface was intuitive and I really liked the features Finder like tags, smart folders, and the way you could custom it with extensions and settings. I like the built in software, like Preview in particular.

I have yet to have anyone show me an OS that comes close to matching macOS out of the box. Even conceding customizations, they're just so lacking in comparison, to someone who 'clicked' with macOS.

Granted, not everyone likes macOS, and thats fine, but to come at it from a place that its so easy to migrate to another platform, ignores so many things about macOS that make it great to a macOS user.

My job requires Windows 10, thats how I ended up on the platform. I learned to get around and replicate as much of the features as I could, but so many are just fundamentally missing and even if I wanted to pay for the functionality (and for so much of it I would), the software doesn't even exist.

As always, it's all about the tooling. For better or worse, more is moving to web/electron, but for teams using Sketch, good luck trying to open Sketch file on Windows.

After getting a Windows gaming PC, I've been spending more and more of my time, developing and otherwise, on PC. I prefer it because it's where I have my large (low DPI :( ) monitor, but Windows is still full of so many papercuts in general usage (I miss being able to drag a file into a Open File dialog so much) that I still greatly prefer using macOS.

Windows has some niceties to try and make the transition better - The Windows Terminal app is pheonomial, and Powershell tries to map rm to whatever the Powershell command is - rm -rf doesnt work as expected though. I honestly don't find myself using WSL all that much - I only use it when I can't figure out how to make ping go forever in Powershell.

Didn't Microsoft make an effort to bring Linux into Windows a few years back? Is that no longer a thing?

That's WSL. It's still there, and it's super easy to use (new Terminal tab > Ubuntu), but I just find I don't have much of a need for it. I do web development with Node, which runs fine under windows. https://imgur.com/a/n19qb8M

Linux on laptops is getting much better too. Is a great alternative now for developers.

So long as you don't need HiDPI, multi-gpu or good touch-pad support.

High density hasn't been an issue for me lately on Ubuntu, I rarely use a touchpad, so I can't comment on that. GPU support is absolutely garbage on Mac OS in comparison, both from a compatability and performance perspective.

For you, but it's an issue.

Anyone who has used any Linux knows HiDPI or mixed DPI monitors are a massive issue on Linux. Even when you get your xrandr configured perfectly fine, disconnecting is a hassle. And that's completely ignoring apps, QT, GTK, etc all handle DPI differently. So you need a different config with DPI setting on each.

One of the best I've used is PopOS with the HiDPI daemon enabled. But even that has issues.

Even Windows can't deal properly with having a 4k laptop screen and a 2k monitor attached. Have to deal with weird text scaling issues and other weird scaling issues.

But MacOS can and does it beautifully.

My new Lenovo laptop touchpad works perfectly well (much better than my old XPS13). Running Pop_OS 20.04.

HiDPI is pretty good on a KDE desktop nowadays

Or good battery life

Especially now that hardware makers are making developer edition devices with Linux-supported hardware (and Ubuntu/RHEL pre-installed)

Agreed. I grew up in the 90s using Windows. Bought my first MBP in 2009 and within a few years was using Macs almost entirely. Started using a Windows machine as my primary earlier this year for a new job and now I rarely touch my MBP. Took a little time to get used to Windows again, but I'm quite content. Windows 10 is excellent, and so is the ThinkPad T480s I'm using.

Nah, Windows is still Windows, no matter how much Linux they try to bolt on. Let me know when they've got proxy icons.