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Comment by zamalek | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, I simply don't understand this recent tendency to launch on Mac first. Out of the big 3 (Linux, Windows, Mac), Mac is by far the worst platform to launch on because you have to buy hardware. Please can we stop it now. Just launch on Linux - everyone can access Linux no matter whether they are PC or Mac.

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The Mac is a phenomenal platform to launch right now if you make software targeted at developers. There's huge growth in mobile development, and many mobile developers work on OS X. Not just iOS developers, I'm seeing lots of Android devlopers working on Macs too recently.

And if you make a new tool, you should go where the young (in the sense of experience, not age) developers are. Experienced developers already have their workflows all set up and don't try new tools as often.

Even if its inconvenient for those who don't have a Mac, from a business point of view, targeting the Mac is absolutely sensible.

Having just (involuntarily) switched to a Mac at work, I can also attest to the fact that Mac users tend towards impulse buying software... The fact that I have to buy software to get proper window management and a good window switcher makes me furious. App-only switching makes no sense to me. I just want to pull up the last window I was looking at, I don't want to have to think about whether it was in the current app group or not. Also, not allowing that to be customized makes no sense. The OS has all of the info needed, and the market for 3rd party apps shows there is a desire... but I guess I'm just 'holding it wrong'.

Most people in the office have spent $100 on software that just customizes the OS, not even considering the other dev tools that they purchase.

As much as I detest OS X, IF I were releasing desktop software for-pay, I would focus on OS X ($ per user) and Windows (kids & college students).

Offtopic, but having gone through that recently I found amethyst to have been a great free tiling window manager.

>Most people in the office have spent $100 on software that just customizes the OS, not even considering the other dev tools that they purchase.

What's your point? Most people have spent >$100 on going to a theater to watch movies, which is arguably a much worse way to spend money than improve your workflow.

Windows has much worse window management than OS X, and so does Linux. Just because the info is there, doesn't mean the Apple team should handle ever edge case and scenario ever.. that's why you have applications. Should an OS also come with a perfect and free IDE?

I'm trying to figure out what on earth you mean by OS X having better window management than Windows and Linux. Of the three, I've long considered OS X to have the worst.

Good for you.

It is true and I dont like this either but I still prefer working on OS X than windows because in windows I cant use most of the tools I use and than linux because of the pain of running linux on desktop.

OS X is a nix that works well on a very specific puece of hardware. I am not wasting my time and sanity fixing some driver compatibility issue.

> The fact that I have to buy software to get proper window management and a good window switcher makes me furious.

Off-topic, but what window management software did you buy? I use Spectacle (http://spectacleapp.com) which is free, and it seems to fit my needs fairly well, but, uh, I'll live up to your stereotype and admit that I'd be glad to pay for something better. :)

>Experienced developers already have their workflows all set up and don't try new tools as often.

Speak for yourself. I'm always trying new tools as they come available, and was thinking that GitUp would be a fun one to add to my toolset. And then I saw "Mac Only" and groaned. I don't own a Mac, and though I will likely buy one soon (for iOS dev reasons), it will always remain my ugly-stepchild dev box, that I own only to do Xcode builds, not any serious development work.

> it will always remain my ugly-stepchild dev box

I simply don't understand how so much weight gets thrown behind such a perverse walled garden from DEVELOPERS. We know far better than this and ObjC? Swift? Eat that right up. It's so unhealthy.

If you're planning to be a partially commercial product (which this appears to be) the reason to launch on Mac first is that Mac users buy software.

Releasing closed-source software on Linux is a pain, unlike Mac where you can assume most people will be running one of 3 recent Mac OS X releases (or even 2)

> Mac is by far the worst platform to launch on because you have to buy hardware

Yea, I'm a huge fan of the free hardware they give away when you download open source operating systems.

No, but if you're a non-Mac user, you'd probably be a huge fan of the wide choices in hardware that are portable across dozens of OS implementations.

He missed the word special. You need to buy special hardware from Apple to use OSX (or figure out how to make Hackintosh work), while Linux can run on just about anything. Also, sidenote, some places do give out hardware with open source operating systems, eg Free Geek[1], but of course this sort of thing isn't available everywhere.

[1] http://www.freegeek.org/

? The market share of people actually running a platform probably matters more than the number of people theoretically capable of installing a platform.

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