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I disagree, i think people like macs, because they hate new technology. I remember a few mac renegades asking when Google Chrome will be available for Mac. Real Mac user will never use Google Chrome, because its to hard to learn new things. Plus do you want to have choice or not? yes, choice is bad, pick mac.

You've either never used a Mac or you just don't understand them. You also didn't read the article, apparently. The whole point of it is to demonstrate how it's possible to develop in many different environments on a Mac.

This is a poor article based on an assertion with nothing to back it up. He just states that developers prefer Macs as if it's some inalienable truth. What I think is the case is the author likes Macs.... he knows a few developers who like Macs.... so.... that must mean that developers like Macs overall. Trust me, there are plenty of developers out there who you'd have to pull their Dells from their cold, dead fingers.

That's the way I feel about my Dell w/ Kubuntu.
I've been trying to use a Mac a bit (previous post) because so many devs are switching. But, I've still found Linux to be a much more efficient system for writing code.

Like Windows, Macs have their place.
BTW, I have all 3 OS's on my desktop with synergy to allow me to control all 3 from the linux box in the middle. All 3 are fine, Linux is just a better development environment.

Though, FTA, I have a hard time understanding why someone would do development in a virtual machine. Everyone I know is always trying to get the maximum performance of of their development environment. Even sacrificing a few percentage points of speed would be a hard sell. For testing, I could totally understand. But, for development.....?

They prefer Macs because of the excellent built-in support for Java SE 6, aka Mustang.

Oh, wait...

Also, they can do .NET development in Visual Studio... ohh wait... ah but they DO have Office!

they have parallels or whatever it was, they run all such tools in it, and thats why mac is good development environment!

Intel Macs have Java SE 6 support. Visual studio development can be performed in Bootcamp or a virtual machine.

You're right about the Java SE 6 support. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1856

> Why developers prefer Macs
They don't.

Seconded!

Another developer that doesn't prefer a Mac...

This got modded up? Why not showcase a more statistically rigorous article, like, say, "Why most developers are Sagittarius" or "Why most developers aren't Apache Longbow pilots"?

I run Ubuntu (latest flavor) on a 6-year-old Dell Dimension. I've been exclusively Ubuntu for three years now although I test with Windows XP in Sun's VirtualBox. As far as I'm concerned, Macs don't have anything my machines don't have, and they're a lot pricier. I don't give a crap about TextMate. I've been using Vim for ten years now and, frankly, TextMate can kiss my Vimming ass.

Somehow, with my older, cheaper hardware, I manage to get a lot of work done ...

... for better or for worse, if your first experience in using a computer was Mac, that sh*t is just awfully difficult to kick ;-(.

Anybody know of any 12-step program for getting over it?

Seems kind of ironic that the reason people in the article prefer Macs is because they can run Windows. If you shell out the cash for a Macbook Pro and run Windows all the time, you could have saved some dough and bought a nice Toshiba or a Thinkpad.

Been developing Win32 for 15 years+ (not vbrun8.dll^W .net). Tried mac. Thought it was okay... but not aws0me!! I really love my Kubuntu on my Dell, thank you very much!

i switched from ubuntu to mac, and regret the apple tax I payed. The java support is there but only supports 64 bit java 6 . The reason I bought it was to do some flex development, to use the profiler and debugger, which adobe doesn't support on the linux platform. The problem is that flex builder only supports 32 bit. You suck apple. Remapping the keyboard is the worse possible thing ever. Just going from ctrl + c to apple or winkey + c .. is terrible . One position your hand is extended , and on mac your hand is curled, just slows you down.. they obviously didn't consider usability when making that decision. If your a real developer stick with linux or windows.

I developed on windows for 9 years. I tried a MacBook Pro, and now I do all my development on OS X. I've been a very happy (and much more productive) mac user for 2 years.

Ironically, ceaseoleo, I find the keyboard shortcuts *much* more intuitive and ergonomic than both Windows and Linux. I also have about 3 years of experience with Linux... I've used gentoo, debian, ubuntu, suse, peanut, xandros, and probably 15 other niche distros. I'm familiar with all the major window managers and tools. While I personally love the open-source philosophy and prefer linux to windows by far, the excellent, consistent design of the OS X window manager has every linux distro beat. The linux command line is marginally better than the OS X command line, but they're close... and I find I rarely need to touch it on OS X.

I still do my legacy .NET work on a PC, but I long for the day when I can shut that machine down and toss it in the dumpster.

if you rarely touch the command line on your mac, it makes me wonder how much development is happening on it......