Recently I challenged myself to learn more about USB, HID devices and kernel development, so I partially reverse engineered and wrote a driver for the Xbox One controller. This is great and all, but it needs to be signed for people to use it without lowering a level of defense. Turns out you don't just need to be an Apple Developer, you also need to make a special request and regenerate your certificate, which needs to have a special extension, else it'll be rejected by the kernel signing system. Not the least worried I pony up 99€ (not a dev), submit a request, and an automated mail tells me I'll have a reply under 7-10 business days. So I wait 2 months, and, slightly worried since I have no reply yet, I submit again. That was 13 days ago[0].
I used to think that GateKeeper was great technology and that things will be okay. Now I have doubts: does Apple really care about its developers? How long before the kext-dev-mode boot arg disappears and kernel space becomes inaccessible to mortals?
Yes, of course, or you wouldn't have the ability to do it at all. But Apple cares more about it's users and the experiences they users have, and things like GateKeeper help them sell users on a safer, walled experience. As an Apple developer (in that I've paid for a license, not Apple-employed) with parents and a grandparent who have a Mac, I much prefer simply telling them to only install stuff from the App Store and not worrying about downloading and running anything from the general Internet.
Stallman was prescient.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Extensible_Firmware_In...
(+1 for the RMS reference)
Really? I'd think this would make the remaining things matter more. Things like:
- International text input: in OS X, out of the box, é is opt+e, e (or the now even easier: hold down e and choose é from the menu). In Windows, é is alt+0233 or something, or change your keyboard layout and relearn how to type apostrophes. Everything else related to international text input is also much nicer in OS X.
- Trackpad quality: I've yet to find a trackpad as nice as the ones that come on Mac laptops
- emacs keybindings in every text box! Anyone? ...Anyone? Maybe it's just me.
On a related note, I like the command key being solely responsible for most GUI application commands (so it doesn't conflict with the above), and would probably also want to incorporate that into an ideal Linux setup. I wonder if someone makes a Linux distro with this sort of thing preconfigured.
I don't prefer it, but it works.
It's a NextStep thing. You can find the complete list in /System/Library/Frameworks/AppKit.framework/Resources/StandardKeyBinding.dict. You can customize them in ~/Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict. The Cocoa API documentation has the details (https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Cocoa/...). There's a graphical editor for the DefaultKeyBinding dictionary (http://www.cocoabits.com/KeyBindingsEditor/), but I've never used it.
EDIT: C-f, C-b work as well.
Are there any others?
Actually, I can tell you for a fact, I've hit M-b (∫) many times and been disappointed by it. I get why, but I'm still disappointed.
C-t works though, and that's awesome to correct typos.
"^w" = (selectWord:);
Annoyingly, Xcode stopped paying attention to this file at some point around version 4, so now you have to maintain a separate version for that.
With Linux and Gnome, you can have several keyboard layouts, which are very easy to switch between (much like multiple languages on a phone keyboard). Usually I use the English International layout, one quick change (accessible from the global bar) and I've got all my accents (also speak and write in French) easily accessible. A bonus is that there's different international layouts if one doesn't suit you. é is simply ' + e. ç is alt , + c. And so on... Éïôàç
I'm sure OSX is a nice operating system, but Linux has very usable desktop options these days too. Windows, not so sure...
> - emacs keybindings in every text box! Anyone? ...Anyone? Maybe it's just me.
I think this one is only you...
I love the (limited) Emacs bindings. C-k is probably my all-time favorite.
No, but as a non-American, I'm glad that free software has us covered...
It's the same on Windows
- International text input: I can't remember the last time I had to use accents or special characters not in my native language; a few greek letters for formulae, and generally I can use '/alpha' instead of α. Isn't having to use chars not in your language pretty uncommon?
- Trackpad quality: yes, I love using Macbook trackpads, but I use the mouse/trackpad very little anyway, and isn't something I find useful enough to miss much.
- emacs keybindings: sounds fantastic, but a) not many people use them and b) don't know if they'd be that great for Vim-ers like me.
Even if there are a lot of things that Mac might do better than Windows and Linux, I agree that the popularity of so many cross-platform tools and the web have nullfied a huge part of it.
I only use keyboards with the english international layout although I'm from Austria and the german layout would be the natural one. Therefore the keyboard layout in the OS is also set to english international. I do this because I program.
And still I'm very happy about the easy access for special characters, because in literally every email I have to use one of ß, ä, ö or ü.
Really? I guess it might be different with the german keyboards, but I've had no difficulties programming on a Swedish keyboard.
They are: I am addicted to vim, and I use bash/zsh in emacs mode, so having the consistency is incredible.
Also having cmd+C for the GUI and ctrl+C for the command line is awesome. This last feature is one of the few things that kills Linux for me (ended up hacking on GTK, which turns out to have both an undocumented setting and an obscure compile time constant somewhere that ends up not working. And no, remapping every single app shortcut is not an option — I tried).
(I didn’t mention metakey access to typing typographically correct characters: –, “, ”, ‘, ’, … etc)
è: option/r-alt+`
ê: option/r-alt+i
ë: option/r-alt+u
(for example, option+` followed by e will do è)
i mostly use us-mac because i'm used to using option to type accents and because i can keep my en keyboard and type on pt-br without problems.
Compose, ", e => ë
Compose, ', e => é
Compose, ^, e => ê
I so wish this system was available more universally.
Apple's consistent use of the "optional" characters is a lot like the old C-64 with the graphical extras available at the push of two buttons.
I had to try a few things for the degree symbol, but I guessed it on my third try (it's "compose-o-o"). Once I knew that, my first guess for ¿ was "compose-?-?", which also turned out to be correct.
But as the other reply said, you can always look them up if necessary, which you'd almost certainly have to do with the Mac's system of "option + some arbitrarily selected key".
Those are all covered:
So if you just apply automatic spell-correction, you have to proof read it afterwords, which is more of a hassle than accenting it manually -because it's a more cognitive work.
Correct accents in greek matter a lot. Reading incorrectly accented words make comprehending quite a bit painful and slow, my guess is because the brain expects something, receives something else and then tries automatically to make sense of what is trained to know it's wrong, slowing the whole process down.
In Windows too, English International uses the same key layout and activates the additional keystrokes for accents and non english characters (i.e Alt+e is é, or Alt+n for ñ)
Just press the key for ´ and then e and then you have é. Tada!
http://www.cultofmac.com/247681/use-these-emacs-legacy-keybo...
Trackpads are OK, but I like my vertical mouse and touch-screens for Windows.
I also don't think there's an app to make every textbox behave in a standard way in Windows or Linux. If only it were that easy.
The trackpad is sadly only nice in OS X; the Windows drivers are mediocre and nothing special. Still, though, I think it speaks volumes that Windows users want to use mice all the time while Mac trackpads are so nice that there was enough demand for Apple to release one for their desktops.
No Windows trackpad has even come close.
There is a nice parallel here. Take advanced Mechanical CAD applications. Pro Engineer, Solidworks, Siemens NX, etc...
Back in the 90's, there was a lot of basic UX work being done on view manipulation. It's a hard problem in some respects. Modes, focus, picks, and a complicated thing to spin around and get into.
A company called SDRC spent a bunch of money on UX research. They ended up using a few of the function keys to trigger view manipulation. And it worked no matter what mode, pick, dialog, or anything else was going on. Most importantly, it only required mouse movement. No holding one button down while moving the thing. No finger fatigue after a lot of view manipulation.
Other companies didn't do this work, and their view commands were modal, or required complex mouse button hold + move operations.
A little company making 3D input devices grew a nice, profitable business out of poor UX design. Funny, their sales to SDRC people were nothing compared to the sales for most Mechanical CAD programs...
So, getting back to that track pad on Apple and UX in general. The Apple OS + track pad has it down cold. It's functional in nearly every use case, and it's low fatigue, and it's fairly discoverable as well as usable.
In Windows land, we get better mice to improve on poor UX. We get touch screens to improve on poor UX. And we get other things to improve on poor things...
People may not agree with all of what Apple sees as a value add. Totally get that. I personally won't touch the closed down iPad and iPhone. They aren't useful to me.
But, the UX on those is very solid.
I do the vast majority of my writing, coding and other non Windows specific work on a Mac Pro, and it's because that UX is there, and I don't need anything but the machine and a nice place to work.
When I go to power up on my Windows machine, out comes the mouse, and the utilities, and, and, and...
Not the same experience at all.
All that said, touch on the Surface does provide some options, but I personally don't find extending my hand any where near optimal compared to a quick gesture on the trackpad that is always right there, and that always does the same thing for the same gestures...
Android and Microsoft phones and tablets' touch sensitivity is great, so it's not some secret of Apple's.
On the topic of trackpads - maybe you could help me understand - when you use the keyboard and trackpad that's built-into the laptop, is it because you're forced to (in a plane) or because you prefer it? I imagine all Mac users who say they can't ever leave the Apple trackpad are environmentally limited to using whatever is built-in to the laptop.
In other words - when I work, I prefer 2 or 3 monitors that are situated about 2 feet from my face and a full size keyboard with numpad (Microsoft Natural). So, I just could never see myself reaching all the way over to the laptop that is driving all of this in order to use a touch pad. But even so, I find all touch pads including Apple's to be imprecise compared to my 5 button vertical mouse. I also have auto-scrolling on Windows which OS X doesn't really do (this is where you push the middle mouse button down and then as you move the entire mouse, things scroll, until you release the button).
I tried using an Apple wireless trackpad (magic trackpad?). Maybe you use one of those with your work setup?
Updating has previously killed my dedicated graphics card, which turned out to be a driver issue. With Intel providing 2 nearly identical drivers one of which kills it.
A while ago the fingerprint reader just stopped working after a restart. After a full hour of debugging and restarting I gave up. The next day I figured I'd try one of my debugging steps again and it started working again.
On my Mac, the worst that ever happened was a corrupted HDD. Booted into recovery, used disk utility to find and fix the problem and never had issues again.
Also, dat touchpad, nothing competes...
That's strange. I'm now sitting in front of a Windows box that had W7 installed on it 3 years ago. I've upgraded to W8, then swapped the SSD in it (restored to the new SSD from image), resized the system partition many times (it's a Windows-Linux dual boot box), then upgraded to W8.1, then Windows 10. Oh, this is the 3rd GPU in the machine. I have never, ever had any problems with Windows itself throughout the 3 years. (I had problems with Linux though.)
I have an EUR 2500 Macbook Pro as well from 2013, and the Windows box has always been more responsive/usable.
Anecdotal, I know.
Googling: http://tipsandtricksforum.com/thread-154.html
"If you connected a second drive or any external drive to your PC (a SSD or HDD) the upgrade will fail if the second (original) drive is not disconnected."
Ok, I have a second internal drive but it's internal and I can't disconnect it easily. I must take my notebook in to update Windows?
Now I'm being badgered every week to update. This is not the user experience I'm looking for.
I run the opposite on my home PC, Windows host and linux guest. Been through multiple video cards and even an intel to amd switch. Also still running like a champ.
Anecdata :)
(I have actually upgraded to 8.1 CTP I think, then continued all the way to 10)
As for the driver issues, that is cause windows releases the software and then the hardware is provided by several companies which is up to them to not screw up there drivers. For apple they release one laptop and that is it. They only have to cater for that device which makes it a hell of a lot easier.
Windows 8, has made huge progress in every hardware aspect of the machine.
The reason I don't blame MS entirely for this is because it's clearly a trade-off. In return for the risk of unreliability, they got a vast increase in the number of hardware manufacturers willing to play in their ecosystem, precisely because MS can be fairly hands-off. This drives prices down, and increases the size of the market-place.
Where I do take issue with MS directly is that despite consciously being in the driving seat of an ecosystem like this for so long, it's taken them years to successfully isolate the user from buggy drivers. They control the OS, so they control the ability of a manufacturer's bug to affect the user. It's not a foregone conclusion that a screwed-up driver must inevitably lead to a bluescreen, or anything like it.
Ugh, kernel drivers will always have bugs and that cannot be isolated from the user all the time. As you stated, the decisions Microsoft took got them to their throne.
I've switched to OSX but i still use Windows 10 on my other laptop and Windows 8.1 on my gaming PC and haven't had a bluescreen since Vista. I literally have never seen it for years. I was shocked to see it changed appearance in a screenshot in an article about Windows 8. And the "upgrade" to Yosemite has completely destroyed my wifi stability, made the system sluggish (Safari even decides to stop smooth scrolling after a few hours), boot time has pretty much doubled with the same amount of apps installed (SSD too).
And MS are in control of how much of a driver needs to be in the kernel. It's not a foregone conclusion that a driver bug cannot be isolated from the user. The techniques involved aren't new. Hell, I don't think they were new when Windows 95 was being written. Again, it's a trade-off; it's easier to write an OS where a driver lives by default in kernel space (certainly with reasonable performance), and where to draw that dividing line is a choice which Microsoft made. They've introduced user-mode drivers for some things, and this is a very good thing.
I don't have a dog in the OS X/Windows reliability pissing match, but part of the reason you won't have seen a bluescreen in years is because Windows 7 (apart from being more reliable from having more man-hours thrown at it, along with an updated driver model from Vista) changed the default behaviour: what would have caused a BSOD in Vista causes a reboot in 7, so you never actually see the error.
I can reproducibly blue screen Windows 8.1 with the latest ATI drivers (as well as every driver for the last year and a half) by watching hardware accelerated Flash movies on an ATI HD 7770 GHz Edition. Swapping the card to a different ATI card fixes it. Swapping the card to an nVidia card fixes it. Swapping the 7770 GHz for another 7770 GHz does not fix it.
This only happens in Windows. It does not happen with the ATI drivers in Linux.
They then faced the upgrade problem: at any point, restrictive control over drivers would mean that hardware that ran Windows N-1 would not run Windows N.
There is also the antitrust argument: control over the OEMs restricts the possibilities for competing software.
And there's a limit to what they can do. My latest driver/hardware bug was discovering that my Crucial MX100 has some horrible interaction with write caching and link power management such that it can vanish from underneath the operating system.
...
> There is also the antitrust argument: control over the OEMs restricts the possibilities for competing software.
Which of these arguments would you like to keep? You can't have both; or at least, they don't refer to overlapping time periods. And I'd take issue with either: in the first case, MS always had the option early on of carving a controlled niche rather than trying for wide appeal. That's exactly what early Apple did, and I'd argue that MS could have done precisely the same on PC hardware, if they'd chosen to. As regards the anti-trust argument, why don't we see that being levelled at Apple? An MS which chose to drive a more closed ecosystem probably wouldn't have been so utterly dominant as to run the risk of antitrust accusations, and again, that was their choice.
> They then faced the upgrade problem: at any point, restrictive control over drivers would mean that hardware that ran Windows N-1 would not run Windows N.
Again, that was their choice.
> And there's a limit to what they can do. My latest driver/hardware bug was discovering that my Crucial MX100 has some horrible interaction with write caching and link power management such that it can vanish from underneath the operating system.
I'd argue that this sort of problem affects either sort of ecosystem.
(Ctrl-Up flips the screen).
While Windows does have problems, latest Apple software is mostly worse bug and update-wise.
Solved it by buying a top-of-the-line machine, which I'm sure Apple is loving.
It was nothing you could see, and other than a jerky in-game mouse you did not notice it. And after an hour of playing, dying cmd+tabbing out to Safari to surf while waiting for respawn, WindowServer core dumped, logging out all users in an instant.
This is fixed in 10.10.3. The jerky mouse pointer problem still remains. I don't use f.lux anymore.
I have the feeling my old machine is using a bit of VRAM when WindowServer starts getting too heavy.
And it was easily solved! Apparently Apple (the rumor is Jobs ordered this, but who knows) didn't want the fans spinning too fast, which caused noise. So they governed the speed on those, too. Solved with SMC Fan Control.
I wasn't too happy about being somewhat deceived by their specs for my equipment, even if they thought their intentions were "good".
My iPhone 4S had broken WiFi just after warranty expired. All cables from Mac and iPhone are in terrible state.
I don't really think that Apple hardware is better than others. Not worse than others, but not perfect. Choice is between OS X and Windows or iOS and Android. Otherwise there are many comparable machines.
Yeah, I'm acutely reminded of this every time someone brings up Windows 7's predecessor. Apparently I'm the only person who ever lived on this planet who had absolutely zero problems with Windows Vista, and even liked it quite a bit.
Vista seemed like it was built to leverage the current hardware of the time rather than run nicely on weaker systems that companies were still selling because they could passably run WinXP (slow CPUs, 256-512MB RAM, integrated GPU). It made sense because both OSX and Linux were capable of GPU acceleration of desktop windowing, aggressive use of caching things in RAM, etc. but too many users were still purchasing the absolute cheapest thing they could find that would still boot.
Then you had all of the hardware issues caused by companies not bothering to write new drivers for old peripherals and the software issues from applications that just assumed you were running as root/admin. I didn't have any old scanners or printers or anything that needed driver updates and very few of my important applications weren't updated to work under the new UAC setup.
In many ways, I feel like most of Vista's problems came from 98SE and then XP being "good enough" for so long that a lot of companies and users weren't used to needing to choose software and hardware more carefully.
Windows Vista on 768 MB of memory is not a happy thing.
I'm not sure why such things happen. Selling a product where the hardware is below minimum reasonable specs for the software it needs should be banned, or something.
I also have a similar feeling when somebody tells me that Windows 8 was only good for touch devices (I enjoyed it in a HP 8710w and didn't miss the touchscreen at all)
...but with Win8 I've learned just how many people never stopped doing things the old way. Does a full-screen Start make sense? Not particularly. But if you're just hitting the Windows key and typing the name of what you're looking for, you only see it for a few seconds. And while you're looking at the search results, you aren't really working actively on what's in your other running apps. Otherwise, you never really see it if you don't want to use it.
I'm glad 10 has shrunk Start back down because my minor complaint has always been that the full screen Start was just a little "jarring" but that's about it. If nothing else, it will make the old school Start menu die hards (read: the faculty I deal with) happier I guess.
Which I'm probably not doing if I'm going from one program with a WIMP-optimized interface to another program with a WIMP-optimized interface; context-switching to keyboard-driven mode is a bigger UX loss than the start screen is there.
Trackpoint. Makes it very hard for me to switch from Thinkpads.
Also, I'm growing quite fond of having a touch screen and a pen for my laptop.
That's funny because …
I just surrendered my MacBook Pro to an Apple Store for service yesterday because the external display mysteriously stopped working and the system won't fully boot. The on-site service tech was super competent but totally baffled and sent the machine away for Apple to replace components until things start working again.
And today Apple just released OS X 10.10.3 Supplemental Update which has description "The OS X Yosemite 10.10.3 Supplemental Update fixes a video driver issue that may prevent your Mac from starting up when running certain apps that capture video."
Hmmmmmmm.
I never ever had any issues with any of my 3 desktop PCs or with mit X200 in the last 5 years. With my recent Thinkpad X1 carbon I had to boot only once into safe mode after upgrading some Lenovo provided driver after almost 2 years of use.
Obviously I'd never be able to give up OSX for work purposes. Pretty much every piece of software I use is tied to OSX only.
The best I've found is DBeaver (or SQuirrel). IntelliJ is working on a thing called 0xDBE, but it feels even worse.
I could easily rattle off a handful of other applications that just feel better, even if slightly, on OS X. DaisyDisk and Transmit come to mind right away.
For an IDE nothing beats the sheer joy of Visual Studio and ReSharper. I use NetBeans for Java (I prefer it over Eclipse and IntelliJ). For MySQL I use Sequel Pro on the Mac but prefer HeidiSQL on Windows. For Linux dev work I'll spin up a VM on Fusion on the Mac or VirtualBox on either.
My point? There's nothing you listed that requires you to use a Mac. I completely understand if you choose to, but there's no need to discount Windows in the process...it's a great development environment for anything but Swift and Objective-C.
I've moved the opposite way (Windows => OS X) and have used SQLYog Ultimate Edition [0] on Windows and like it a lot -- but find Sequel Pro underpowered and slower to use, and wish there was a better alternative.
- Sketch
- Pixate
- Framer Studio
- iTerm
- Fluid
- Keynote
- Pages
- Quick cast
- Cloud App
Granted I haven't looked into a lot of these to see if they've picked up Linux or Window's support. However I doubt any of the one's I've listed are all on Linux, which I'd for sure need to do any development work.
Some of these I'm sure have alternatives but the one app I just can't do without is Sketch. Gimp doesn't compare and wine + photoshop hackery on Linux is a nightmare.
- Only for a few apps, like Evernote. - Laptops on battery.
For Visual Studio I'd bet on VMs over Wine, but then I probably wouldn't be using Linux.
I used Xcode a few years back and it was a nightmare with the limited things it allowed me to do when compared to Visual Studio.
...however, if you're developing iOS and OSX apps you need Xcode. So I'm not sure what your point is.
If you want your Unix toolchains for development, you could still have them. The Surface Pro is powerful enough to run Linux in Vagrant or another virtualization engine. So you could just run a virtual dev environment. Virtual environments are sometimes better anyway, since you can replicate your operational infrastructure.
Windows 10 is looking good. If it gets really, really good they might close the gap with Apple for professional users. Their glastnost/perestroika trend of opening up and embracing the dev community isn't hurting their reputation either. I really think Satya Nadella is turning the company around.
Choco install git.install /GitAndUnixToolsOnPath Choco upgrade git.install
It is a beautiful world with and my slashes work both ways!
I use it on OS X to do linux-only stuff (such as loop-mounting an ext4 image).
The touch screen even works with Gnome. Even rdp remoting into my Surface from my desktop to use the Linux guest has also been the best performing Windows to Linux remote control that I've used for the amount of setup time. On a gigabit network, it's really nice.
I usually buy windows machines because of price/performance, and, to be honest, because I know how to make windows work for me and don't want to learn mac idioms.
However, the first thing I do is install git for windows, which gives me bash to navigate the filesystem, and then vagrant/virtualbox/ubuntu for development.
I'm also spoiled by the App Store concept. Windows needs to force it on developers. One tap installs on Android and great dependency tools like homebrew or Leiningen have made me never want to download stuff manually ever again.
Apple insist on charging a premium. In addition they prefer to play the above median range of the market. Apart from first-to-market "freebies" they don't play for dominant market share. They insist on that premium, at the expense of market share and other trade-offs.
They don't play for check box ticking. They don't adjust to appeal to mobile service companies, IT purchasing departments or other buyers that make decisions about what other people will use. IE, it's not corporate sales departments dictating strategy according based on short term sales.
In order to get their premium they make stuff appealing enough to a subset of people that they are willing to spend their own money, pay that premium and get the thing that they decided they want for themselves. To make a stretched, contrived and over-complimentary analogy.. It's like a politician who wants to convince the voting public to join him in his position vs a politician that checks the polls to find out what his positions are.
Like I said, I don't have that much loyalty to Apple. I don't buy iphones because androids @ half the price are pretty good. I'd be interested if Apple puts out a laptop with a sub €500 price, but I'm not cranky if they don't have one. When they do happen to have a product that I buy for whatever reason, I'm usually on the fence mostly because of price but fairly well impressed once if I buy it.
But….I suspect the €1000+ laptop market is going to keep shrinking, and it's getting harder to justify buying a macbook. I still expect to get years out of the one I have, but I wouldn't be surprised if I opt for a €200 something when the time comes. Unless… Apple happens to be making something I'm willing to pay extra for at the time.
Possibly, But the high end laptop mark is eating into the workstation market from the bottom now that 32GB and and decent Quadro cards are common in laptops. At work basically all our CAD and 3D modelling people use laptops, whereas a few years ago they all had workstations. Same seems to be happening with video and music production. Even more and more of the gamers I know are option for laptops over desktop computers.
More expensive and less powerful GPU.
My home is desktop free since 2003 and as you say, Apple does not fulfill such market.
To keep this on the rails, I have to wonder exactly how much Apple has paid out to developers on the iOS platform vs Microsoft on their mobile platform. The very first reason the author of the linked article cited for his decision to pull out was competition, which combined with having the largest payouts by a large margin speaks to the health of the platform imho. Native vs. web apps has been debated endlessly, but the doomsday scenario for Apple's approach has which has been trumpeted for many years now has conclusively not come to pass. I suppose if you extend the time horizon out to some Nth degree that may change, but what has Apple been doing in the meantime? Making a ton of money and paying a ton of money to developers.
I recently started using the Windows Chocolately package manager, strange name, but works great and makes setting up a new machine and maintaining utilities much more simple.
To build my work environment on a brand new install all I have to do is Start -> Run -> https://boxstarter.org/package/nr/url?https://raw.githubuser... as administrator.
See the following repo for more information https://github.com/ghuntley/dotfiles-windows/blob/master/des...
Just have a look at the enormous amount of open research available at http://research.microsoft.com and try to find the equivalent of Apple. That tells me enough.
For Professionals, (especially software developers), I don't think so. OS X is still very superior to Windows. And the apps on OS X makes it worthwhile.
Osx just seems to have a lot of problems with very basic stuff like beach balling various system dialogs, failing with external displays etc.
The hardware is nice, especially the trackpads are way better than the stuff for example Lenovo puts out. Though I have to admit that I really don't like aluminium as laptop material.
I have been using Windows religiously for 15 years. I moved to OS X last August and it's way "too" superior to windows/linux.
You misspelled 'personal preference' there.
The thing I really notice is how everybody with a mac has a machine that is newer than two years. Those who are hitting the two year mark are experiencing hardware issues, particularly lighting, which is needed for dexternal montitors, but it seems trackpad longevity is also an issue.
For most of us, the apps on OS X are also available on other platforms. The only thing I can't get on Windows that mac devs get is Sketch, but the designers post on invision anyway, so it isn't a huge loss.
Everyone in my department at the university who switched to a Mac has had good longevity, most lasting about 4-5 years until they decide they want a new machine (but the Mac still works). I had two Mac Minis in the lab, one a G4 Mac Mini from 2002 and the other a first-gen Intel Mac Mini (it came with 10.4, I don't recall the year). I used the Intel Mac Mini until I graduated in 2013 and had no problems at all.
So, anecdotes are just that. My department consistently has been moving to OS X. Probably about half the professors have switched when there was just 1 professor who used it in 2007. Even my supervisor didn't switch until about 2010. He's still using the same iMac he bought then. The labs mostly use Windows because of the data acquisition software only runs on it as they tend to have specialized equipment that only wrote Windows drivers.
I don't think this should count as a counterexample. You have switched laptops in 2013, and while there could be many valid reasons for that (battery life, more power for development, your old laptop does not support a new OS) it made you old laptop inadequate -- and hence the switch.
Having worked at a company with +50 MacBooks used for 3-4 years, it was really uncommon to see hardware failures besides batteries or power supplies. So I guess we can't generalize out of one experience.
Yeah, no. I have 10 year old Mac (damn, 15 year old) that still work perfectly, as well as 7, and 4 year old. Not to mention that Macs, in general, retain their aftersale value better, so that they commonly "experience hardware issues" does not play well.
The reason some people get newer machines every couple or years or so is that the Mac ecosystem favors newer anyway -- you get quite updated specs etc every two iterations (usually the first iteration is speed bump upgrade), and sometimes things work only with the newer models (e.g. a feature that needs the later bluetooth chipset and wont work on the previous bluetooth generation, etc.).
Same would apply to most modern programming stacks that come with batteries.
Given that I used to like Windows, before getting into the UNIX world. As it was huge improvement over plain *-DOS for someone with Amiga envy.
Going back wasn't a big deal specially given the Windows office requirements.
I enjoy playing with Macs since the LC days at the university, but always was put off by the hardware combination that was given at their price range.
For me the GPU/CPU combo is quite important.
The general public really isn't using Office 365 or Surface 3 though.
I wasn't 100% sold on the price/value ratio when I bought it, but now am totally happy I did. Great machine.
My only problem was an incompatibility with a specific virtualisation technology in the Surface to reduce boot time and Intel HAXM.
There's also a problem with bluetooth lag/packet loss when maxing out the WiFi.
I'm running an Apple Bluetooth keyboard and generic bluetooth mouse when I work from home, Type cover on the go. The Type cover is terrible for the price, but it's an OK keyboard. The touchpad leaves much to be desired.
[0] http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-two-day-laptop-battery-is-he...
o_O
Was the whole post in a sarcastic tone, or just this part? Serious question.
You can get the 5 pack on amazon for $70. I personally think that's way better than iCloud although I mainly bought it for storage, because if you need more than 1TB that becomes by far the cheapest available option.
Not sure how the extra services from iCloud and office365 compare, don't use either all that much, but both seem kinda equal and lacking compared to google or dropbox.
So I'd certainly call that a nice deal.
I wrote the chess program given away free with the early Apple IIs, made some good money on a Mac app in 1984, and until recently favored Mac laptops: a fan boy. That is changing. I bought an incredibly cheap and underpowered Windows 8.1 laptop in January (HP Stream 11) for $199 and like it quite a lot. I plan on getting either a Surface 3 or Surface 3 Pro soon, and will put my old MB Air on the shelf next to my Linux laptop to be used just as needed.
Microsoft seems to be heading in a good direction, Apple less so. Things like living in a web browser and a platform neutral IDE (I use IntelliJ for Clojure, Java, Python, PHP, and Ruby) make OS platform less impactful on using a computer. I am looking at Surface 3 Pros and Surface 3s, price and feature wise, vs. Apple products and I find Apple losing ground. The comparison is especially bad for Apple re: cloud services: Office 365 is such a good deal for $100/year compared to iCloud, with way more and better services.
As software engineers, money for hardware, software, and cloud services might not mean much, but I think it is good to look at what the general public will be using.