Mac is targeted to inexperienced computer users. So why is it popular in Silicon Valley? | Hacker News Reader

Mac is targeted to inexperienced computer users. So why is it popular in Silicon Valley?

2 pointsamichail14 comments

Is it simply a hatred of everything Microsoft?

Mac is targeted to unexperienced computer users[sic]

According to who?

edit: While I'm fairly certain this post isn't, it certainly smells of trolling.

It's pretty obvious that the mac is all about simplicity at the cost of flexibility, choice, power, and price.

We must be using different macs or using them in a different fashion, because I feel I have more flexibility under OS X than I do under Windows.

Anyway, this discussion is pointless, has been repeated countless times before and will not end in agreement.

Is it sufficient to say that a good reason I use my Macbook with os x is because it makes me happy?

You don't play games?

Not while working...

[Not in Silicon Valley]

Because I was tired of Windows, and when it came right down to it everything I choose to use as a developer is platform-agnostic and generally easier to install on Darwin.

And it's pretty.

No, it's cause you can run Cubase, sit inside a shell, and compile from source on the same machine. Well at least that's why I use it.

i feel like it makes easy things easy (for "inexperienced computer users") and the hard things ("hacking") possible!

Probably because it's based on a linux core.

Edit: sorry, seems I was wrong :-)

It's not. Even if it was, it wouldn't be the reason people use it.

(FreeBSD user-space utilities, with a FreeBSD/Mach hybrid kernel.)

It's based on a unix variant. So was it popular in Silicon Valley before OS X?

Of course, in today's web 2.0 world, the OS core is not so important: more people are building web apps rather than desktop apps.

even more of a reason to use a unix-based os. apache, php, perl, tcp/ip, and in fact most internet technologies grew up on unix, and it's easiest to work with them there.

No need to worry about that with cloud computing though. For example, development for the Google App Engine works just fine under Windows.

so that's it, huh? the only way to write web apps is with google app engine?

i spend a lot of time writing server apps, some of which serve up data for web clients, all of which are ultimately deployed on linux/unix. the low-level apis available on a mac are pretty close to identical to what's available on linux, so it's easy for me to do development and testing on a mac.

i don't know why i'm bothering. it's pretty clear you've already made up your mind, so why even ask anybody else.

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