While running a Linux stack may still work, your Mac info is outdated by three years, at least. Macs have entered the zoo in 2015.
Macs do not allow running unsigned software by default, and no one runs antivirus on Mac, ever. So even if they were commonly being infected, which they aren't, the person above would have organizational indemnity if someone were infected because they're following industry best practices by not running antivirus on Mac.
If you want, you can further restrict Macs to only App Store software, which is heavily sandboxed. Then you can go even further by not allowing the individual users to install software on their own, if you really want to be draconian about it.
Unless someone is being individually targeted, running very outdated software, or is intentionally trying to get themselves infected, it will not happen. Even if all three conditions are true, it's still very unlikely.
Anyone who says otherwise is just fear mongering. That same level of fear mongering could point to the dozens of pieces of malware that have been released for Linux.
I say this as someone who uses a Linux laptop for work and a Windows desktop at home. I don't have a dog in this fight. I do, however, try to stay very informed about the state of software security.
My company-issued MBP is running something called "Cylance Protect" (and "TrendMicro" earlier). And also something called "Forecpoint DLP". I have no control over any of that, software just appears and disappears. I think it's done by something called "Jamf".
I don't really care either way. The only thing I actually use on the Mac is Chrome for email/calendaring/vidconf and some intranet sites. Actual work is all on Linux servers via ssh (and even that has "ClamAV" antivirus running). So I'm just using it as an expensive terminal/chromebook.
We also have the Forcepoint nonsense.
Working at a large company (also not one of the famous silicon valley tech companies) and if you get a macbook, they are managed remotely and have BitDefender installed.
Also, p4merge is the best merging utility for any VCS, and I always install it alongside git if I work in Windows.
What makes it "the best" ? Honest question, i found it kludgy and settled for Kdiff3.
Enterprise volume licenses. It probably cost them less than the time/money they'd lose if you spenta few minutes trying to figure out how to open some file sent by non-devs.
Nice graphical tooling and sane developer experience.
Perforce integrates very nicely with a whole bunch of third party tools in a way git does not, and is on the whole a lot easier to use for most people than git (and I'm saying this as someone who doesn't like Perforce at all)
Said as someone who likes perforce. Having hundreds of developers working with large binary files was incompatible with git until very recently.
Maybe 5+ years ago?
All my actual work was done on Unix/Unix-like machines on our own old network, something we clung on to after acquisition.
I used to really like Mac OS X, but nowadays it feels much less polished and much more annoying. It might just be nostalgia, but I remember Leopard being more responsive and having fewer pop-ups (Screw you, iCloud! I don't want to synchronise my files!).
Additionally, not sure about you, but the reason I like to develop on macs is due to the fact that I can test nix software on them. That means I am installing and running nix binaries either via browser or through package managers such as pip. There is absolutely a non-zero risk that Linux malware will somehow find its way into my development environment. I am not trying to fear monger, as I do believe macs are still generally the safest, but don’t let them lull you into a false sense of security
What "zoo"?
To this day, Macs are practically virus-less, which they always where (99.999% of the scares in the media were for trojans, and even those at worse affected something like 1-5% of the total user base) -- nothing like the good ole Windows (XP and pre) days where after 1 day surfing the web you'd have a few viruses.
And of course if you go with the default options (gatekeeper, signed packages, etc) you have even less to worry about.
It's also not about "market share" -- Macs had 1/4 the market share they have now in 1990-1997, but there were tons of viruses for them under the old OS.
It's not like the original (pre-many security features were introduced) OS X was specially hardened or anything, but it was much more secure than Mac OS and the old Windows versions just by having a basic UNIX-style design.
Exactly what I'm talking about. Not to this day, but to some time back in 2015. Right now any trojan toolchain on the black market comes with a Mac-targeted package.