Today I’m using a Mac (since 2011, but inspired to write this today in 2016) not because I have some profound love for Apple (I don’t really) or miss Steve Jobs (he was a dick, but I bet I’d have gotten along with him) only because I don’t want to spend excess time messing with Windows headaches and the games I generally play over the last 7-8 years have been things like SimCity, Civ 5, and Cities: Skylines. All run perfectly fine on Mac w/ Steam. If I played 1st Person shooters I’d probably still have a Windows machine stashed in the corner for that…
…and…
…as for Macs, I converted solely because of what I saw a few key coders achieve in seconds over a Windows machine. I’ve not seen a single person come close to what these people could accomplish on a *nix based platform vs Windows. I switched, my headaches went away blagh blagh blagh (you know the ads, I sound like that) and then between OS-X & VMware Fusion I found I had a machine I could do everything from a coding perspective on (I initially bought an MBA). Then when I got the Retina Pro 15” I realized not only did I have every programming platform in existence available to me (even .NET!) I also realized it was the only machine of it’s size, weight, and horsepower that would let me edit in screen full frame 1080p or even 4k video without choking on itself. Windows didn’t even have a viable option on the market at the time (and really, it still doesn’t).
At this point I’ve given up trying to even use Windows to do work, primarily cuz it’s bad at video, bad at building code (most comparable machines just don’t build 1 to 1 code bases as fast), has weak POSIX compliance, Powershell is just a pain in the ass, it has poor SSH support (load 3rd party software? does it even internet) and security in general is completely bonkers, and Windows can never seem to find or maintain security integrity around any non-WINS/AD identified network (ok, in Windows defense, this is a Windows Server concern not Windows Desktop).
Beyond that even the OS-X UI is preferable to the sluggish, strange multi-tasking awkwardness of Windows 2010 (and it’s dramatically improved over 8/8.1, 7, Vista, XP, & 2000). The fact I can launch a program and it doesn’t kill process & memory resources while I’m doing something has always fascinated me vs. Windows, which seems to hand over every available resource to whatever is attempting to launch. What is that nonsense even? Let it launch on a lower priority thread or something. I could go on…
I’ve got plenty of complaints about OS-X, but it stays out of the way when I need to build code, automate infrastructure, sling dynamic code (re: Ruby, JavaScript, etc) and generally tears through Core CLR code & .NET Mono code dramatically better than sluggish old VS on a box with more resources then this MBP. Honestly, it’s kind of sad how it seems to magically do better then Windows hardware. There aren’t a whole lot of specific reasons except that Macs are usually just integrated (motherboard/RAM/Proc/Video) better than most of the other junk that gets released to market. Of course if someone wants pure horsepower, yeah, got buy a desktop and get 4x-20x what comes in the best Mac, then run Linux. You’ll get stupid amounts of performance to build and process stuff with that. But in the consumer based world, if you want the maximum options with the minimal amount of bullshit in your life, you go and buy a MBP and get on with life. I could go on…
I’m sure there’s a million other things where X device for Y niche is more perfect or perfectly acceptable, and I doubt I’d disagree, so go on, get yourself one of those. But again, for “the maximum options with the minimal amount of bullshit in your life, you go and buy a MBP and get on with life”. On that note, I’m off to sling some Core CLR code against a prospective Scala solution and test a micro-services idea of mine - using Docker and jazz on my OS-X box. I’ll be done in 20 minutes and will move on to probably a relaxing round of Cities: Skyline. ;)
Thanks for reading my partial rant /slash/ exploration of why I’ve ended up on Apple Hardware.
