The cheapest way to buy into Mac is a Mini, but even the "top" $999 one has no SSD, only 8GB of RAM, and a older i5. Compare that with a $500 PC, you can get a legitimately high end developer machine including [basic] monitors and the whole works for that.
Then you need to buy Parallels at $99/year and a bunch of Mac/Apple specific accessories which add up fast. This is particularly important since Bootcamp is garbage, Parallels is the only good way to run Windows or Linux side by side (which in our multi-device world is important).
I could likely even afford to spend $1K on a Mac. I just don't feel like if I did so I'd wind up with a good developer machine that will last me three or four years. Seems like $2400 is about the minimum buy-in.
I own a Macbook Air, a Macbook Pro, and I have a custom PC that I built for gaming. After looking at all the ins-and-outs of what you get with a Mac and using them for a while now, it's well worth any extra cost. To suggest that that cost is $2400 minimum is nonsense, though.
> You don't have to buy Parallels unless you plan on running Windows concurrently for some reason.
Most developers cannot avoid Windows or Linux entirely. I am talking about development as a job, not my Ruby side projects. Business customers utilise Windows and Linux regularly. It cannot be ignored simply because it isn't as fashionable.
> To suggest that that cost is $2400 minimum is nonsense, though.
I said development machine, not minimum. You might be able to do it cheaper, but you'll either wind up with a HDD instead of an SSD, or an SSD so tiny (128 GB) that you'll soon regret it.
In 2015 I'm looking at 16 GB of RAM, i7, some kind of graphics acceleration, minimum 512 GB SSD (or a 256 GB SSD + internal HDD). That's what my desktop and Windows based laptop offer, to get it on Mac I am looking at $2K+ easy.
The top end 15" MBP meets all of my requirements but it costs $2,499 + tax.
What kind of a PC can you get for $1K that will be a "Good development machine" in the next 4 years? I had a top of the line Sony laptop about 6 years ago, it became obsolete in the third year of usage, at the same time I still have my 2012 rMBP which is still running insanely good (same 3 years of use) for my tasks ( I do heavy photoshop web design work and code frontend)
Sure it is not a super speedy machine today but it works very well for me, running xcode/photoshop and the whole kit.
$2400 sounds ridiculous.
edit: you seem to have super hight requirements, so my comment is more of a: if someone wants to dip their toes into it, it is not so expensive and it will work pretty well if you have some patience with the occasional slowness.
And is it really so surprising that Mac OS is so popular? You have a stable, non-moving target to build your software for, and you don't have to worry about "Well, what if they have version x of this lib instead of version y? Or what if this kernel config option isn't toggled on? Or.." and so on. There's something to be said for homogeneity, especially for software development.
The real reason is COST. Macs are more expensive for any given spec. It is that simple.
Says, me, the visual studio user that has an iMac.
http://ditto-cp.sourceforge.net/
That said, probably the biggest Mac barrier for me is that I cannot stand the large palm rests, including and especially with (but not only because of) their sharp front edges.
I'm also not especially fond of glossy displays.
Software-wise, I bump up against some instances where Apple exerts its control to stifling effect: 1) Yanking the rug out from under FinalCut users having some... "legacy" requirements; 2) 30% because we can, milking the "walled garden" for maximum effect; etc. On the other hand, someone needed to fire the first bullet into Flash and some of the other Adobe corporate BS.
And to "go Retina". And to advance AES deployment into the ARM hardware environment.
But, these days, my concerns software-wise run towards "open" -- full stack -- ain't gonna be / can't be taken away (content as well as functionality), and real usability as opposed to what appears to be an increasingly self-serving cadre of "graphic design".
Assuming Apple went FOSS tomorrow, cost is the other large factor.
(jokes)
In my experience developing I've always found it easier to resolve dependencies on Linux than OSX.
The software that's stopping me is the OS itself.
[1]https://github.com/TermiT/Flycut
(It's MIT licensed and also in the app store... there is a link to the app store version on the github page)
Can't reconfigure my brain, I use Windows at work.
I want to desperately switch to Windows and Surface (Pro or Book). What is stopping me is unavailability of Sketch (a UX Design app) on Windows.
Works great, does what I need it to, isn't a ripoff.
Also, I don't think anyone should use PCs or Macs because I am against fascism and elitism.
If not for those, I could deal with the other warts.
When I was doing web development, I used my Mac because it basically had the good parts of Linux and Windows for what I was doing. Both Ruby and Python work great, and http://pow.cx/ makes Rails development really nice when you're working on multiple projects. On the flip side, I could use Photoshop when I needed to without needing a VM or dual-boot.
Linux is a way better ruby environment than Windows is, and Windows is a way better environment when you're dealing with clients (Word docs/PPT, PSDs, etc). OSX is kind of the sweet spot in the middle.
Now that I'm doing more DSP and embedded type work, I still use the Macbook occasionally, but most of the work is done on a dual-booting Windows/Linux Lenovo. Linux for writing code (arm-gcc-none-eabi) and Windows for CAD.
I didn't much like the brushed metal interface they both had back then. While I've never used it iTunes on Windows did have a reputation for being bloated and unstable (if I remember that last part correctly). Quicktime didn't exactly help that reputation either. Thank god for free alternatives.
I still wouldn't use one as my home PC, though, because I like to play the occasional videogame.
^ turns off the animation.
It seems like a somewhat useless feature, but I found it super useful for putting together scripts for prepping developer machines. Snapshot a clean install, run the script, fix things that aren't quite right, revert back to the snapshot and re-verify.