Comment by Fnoord | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Fnoord | Hacker News Reader

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Some are switching, some are not. Some arguments are sound, some aren't. Its all rather vague and anecdotal, without hard numbers. It really depends on the needs of the developer (or user in general), and if they're willing to make compromises or allow changes.

The problems:

* Lack of focus on macOS (compared to iOS), and the iOSation of macOS.

* Lack of hardware upgrades on Mac Mini, Mac Pro, Macbook Air. MBP specific: focus on size and weight (and butterfly keyboard with less travel) instead of DDR4 32 GB RAM / stronger battery / latest gen processor (read: MBP becoming MBA). Gimmicks like touchbar, force touch.

* "Bullying." +300 EUR extra tax on MBP. Ridiculous things like having to pay 100 USD to release a Safari extension.

[Please, feel free to make addenda on these.]

A post with some random picture of GNOME 3 with a Terminal is just cringeworthy though. What does that have to do with developers? I see no development taking place. Could be a sysadmin's workstation for all we know.

I very much like macOS. Its excellent for development. You have the software from macOS (which includes some software not available on Linux). You got UNIX under the hood. All of the software is managed with Homebrew which is excellent (macOS has come a long way in that regard). Really need Windows? You got all the options available from Linux (VM, WINE) plus Bootcamp. Microsoft even provide a VM with Edge themselves. The keybinds and workflow in macOS are consistent and feel natural (with the addition of Amethyst for window management, Tmux in iTerm (fullscreen with Powerline, and Vim), and Alfred instead of Spotlight), and I'm very much used to them. That being said I could just use a Terminal with Git and SSH and Vim or Sublime Text on Linux or Windows as well, but I'd lose some of the above advantages. Linux has far less software, the workflow is clunky, and I'm scared for all the hardware working well. Windows just isn't UNIX under the hood and you notice that when you work with open source software just like you notice WINE isn't native on Linux or macOS.

Package managers on Linux work better than brew IMO. They are more mature and better integrated with the OS. It would be nice if brew upgrade installed OS security patches etc.

Instead there are the unsolicited, constant, and annoying nags from the MAS.

I found it easier to rebind keys in GNOME than Mac OS.

Dual booting OSes has existed longer than Mac OS X.

Are there many truly Mac-only apps these days? Apple's own apps used to be a draw for me but they got rid of the one I used seriously (Aperture) and change the others so much it is hard to keep up.

Adobe apps are honestly the only reason I am keeping my Mac partition at this point.

Package managers on Linux work better than brew IMO.

I used Linux on the desktop for many years (1994 to 2007) and until now on servers, but I have to disagree respectfully. It's great that on macOS package management of third-party software is decoupled from the OS. It means that one can upgrade third-party software (per Homebrew) without upgrading (and potentially breaking) the whole OS. On Linux, it is normally a choice between a stable OS and stale software, or fresh software with an unstable OS. Of course, things like Snap, AppImage, etc. are changing that.

I found it easier to rebind keys in GNOME than Mac OS.

More important to me are consistent shortcuts. On macOS virtually every native application uses the same keyboard shortcuts. With Linux it's all over the place.

Are there many truly Mac-only apps these days?

Yes. Omni{Graffle,Focus}, Little Snitch, TweetBot, etc. And then there are many applications that are only available on Windows or macOS, besides Adobe software, the Affinity apps, Microsoft Office, 1Password, etc.

> Package managers on Linux work better than brew IMO. They are more mature and better integrated with the OS.

Brew is more than Brew because of Brew Cask.

More mature, how? Can you already install multiple versions of a package with Linux package management? From what I read, NixOS comes close to the way Apple works with .App. Debian and Fedora don't use that. Don't get me started on Debian. Stable, yet always out of date.

macOS is also UNIX while Linux is Linux (and has Systemd which I'd have to learn, while for example Launchctl I already know). macOS comes with PF (which I know how to use and is much easier than IPT), and a Little Snitch license is only 30 EUR. Then there's X11 and Wayland. Is Wayland default already? I don't know.

> It would be nice if brew upgrade installed OS security patches etc.

softwareupdate* allows that. If it bothers you to type, make some shell scripts. Not a big deal. You even see they're available in the Dock.

My main gripe with Brew is Brew Cask. I need to check with a shell script if the closed source packages have been updated. But on Linux I'd be using APT repositories or would have to check manually as well.

Windows has Chocolatey which is nice, but like I said you notice Windows isn't UNIX all the time (tho it has improved, and so is Microsoft!).

> I found it easier to rebind keys in GNOME than Mac OS.

You don't get it. I don't have to rebind much. The default are consistent, logical, and useful already. I don't use Spotlight or Siri so that is disabled. Alt + Space leads me to iTerm (with Tmux), and Cmd + Space leads me to Alfred. Caps Lock is bound to Ctrl. The rest is default.

When I looked for Linux notebooks the price of a MBP 2015 was slightly higher (while there was an in between 1080p and 4k) but then I know I don't have a learning curve, and the above advantages also remain.

Finally, my gf can use Microsoft Office on my MBP if she really has to (I don't use it myself). I tried to get her to LibreOffice but there's a learning curve involved and we both CBA.

If I may recommend, softwareupdate.

I just run softwareupdate -dir.

Feel free to ad your own home-brew formula to run softwareupdate. But as it stands, having that handle OS updates, similar to freebsd-update works fine for me. I also personally use nix to handle package management on OS X which I argue works better than most linux package managers in general. If a bit finicky.

Sketch is a mac only app example, amongst others. I keep OS X for a few reasons:

- it upgrades fine, I've had issues with upgrades on almost every linux distribution ever

- it supports multiple monitors without pulling teeth and fingernails

- more recently, high dpi support, i tried windows 10 and its a bit of a tire fire based on what you run, not a fan, linux was pretty close

- overall just get out of my way ness of full screen mode works fine and the touch gestures

Honest questions since I read these sorts of things a lot right now. There's the assertion that there's a lack of focus on macOS (I agree w/ the hardware issues for the most part).

1) What data other than anecdotal (e.g. it feels like things crash more) do we have that supports the assertion? 2) What features would you ask Apple to focus on? What improvements are necessary for macOS to be a better development platform for you?

I don't have any major complaints about macOS itself for development purposes. Others may and I read a lot of gripes about it generically but very little specifically.

> (I agree w/ the hardware issues for the most part).

Oh, I was echoing the opinion of a vocal minority there. Personally, I find the software in a relatively good spot. I made some comments on potential improvements hereunder.

In the past I had issues with either WiFi or DNS (could've been both I honestly don't remember) but this was fixed in I think El Capitan (that I forgot as well...).

> What improvements are necessary for macOS to be a better development platform for you?

The filesystem. HFS+ is ancient, but stable. I'd like a filesystem with support for CoW for snapshotting and checksums for data integrity (like hardware RAID, ZFS, and Btrfs). I know Apple's new FS is going to support those features, as well as native cryptography. I know this partly overlaps with system administration which is a bit outside of macOS league but still [and I do think Apple could actually advance in that area with features like ZFS and PF but that is a totally different topic]. (A workaround is using ZFS, or just wait for the time being.)

Time Machine. I understand Apple wants to sell Airport Express and Airport Capsule but that is no longer developed. Why does it still need AFP? Make it support whatever protocols which can be used native or via Fuse (SMBFS, SSHFS, NFS), and make Time Machine integrated in the new FS. (A workaround is using AFP on a server, or using CLI software like Rsync and Git.)

Out of date software shipped. Bash, Python, Git, OpenSSL to name a few. (A workaround is using Homebrew [or an alternative for Homebrew like Macports or Fink or ..] and using those binaries and libraries in /usr/local one really needs to make sure they're using the correct binaries and libraries though.)

Apart from that I feel its Homebrew and .App format which makes software management good. (I don't use an IDE, but I know they're widely available for macOS.)

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