13 Replies
what kind of computer are you buying
how would you use it
what other options are you looking at
Windows WSL V2
You are kind of carpenter or want to be one! Do you not deserve/need the best tool for it?! That is a mac.
I prefer mac if I need to be in office and just plug and play. I prefer mac because of the excellent experience you can have on a couch.
But I use WSL 2 on a windows machine as my daily driver. The company I work for has an application that eats RAM for breakfast and everything is dockarized (and mac no like docker). My AMD Ryzen 9 7950X with 64 gig DDR5 however, makes my dev experience very very fun. It also allows me to to play high end video games with my friends from time to time.
So like everything... it depends, wfh behind your sweat sweat desk? WSL2 for me 🙂
I switched from windows to Mac recently. I don’t regret the decision. The os is not great…. And the macos ui is kinda shitty. But the hardware is far better than any windows laptop I’ve tried (and I really did look at a ton of windows options). The other nice thing is that most Unix command line apps work mainly without needing a vm
I was worried about Rosetta but the truth is I have only ever needed it for 1 thing which was a weird library for working with an embedded processor
And they have since updated that library so now I don’t need it at all
no.
i own 3, i have never paid for one with my own money. they are not worth the small amount of creature comfort they provide. windows is simply more powerful, linux even more so if you're a superuser.
But the speakers screen keyboard and touchpad are really just amazing. And the M1 chip is strangely quiet and powerful. All that said. The laptop was incredibly expensive. But I use it like 12 hours a day between work my side gig and everything else
I agree Linux is more powerful but you end up doing a lot by yourself. I also agree windows is better than Mac OS. But 90 percent of the apps I use are cross platform and work the same on all 3
But in general my opinion is the macOS is a bit worse than windows. But the hardware is much better at least at the top of the line
You are going to pay the Apple tax for that though
What do you mean with hardware?
I got an m1 pro for 2800 euro's. If you spend the same money on a desktop pc, you really lose the argument about hardware.
I do have to admin that the package you get when getting a mac if you have an iphone, airpods and are a dev that does not sit behind the same desk always is unbeatable. But don't buy a mac for raw performance 😛
Yeah I’m sorry. I’m just talking about laptops. With a desktop you can get whatever you get something better for cheaper
If you want to be a mobile dev - yes. You can only develop iOS apps using a MacBook.
After I got a MacBook as a mobile dev from my employer, I fell in love with MacOS and all other Apple products.
i recently just swapped from windows to mac. Docker ran terribly on windows, mac seems to do alright. WSL in my experience is always really finicky and i never get a seamless experience with it. Since Macbook is FreeBSD based, developing on it has a lot of parelels with other unix based systems so it's really nice cross platform. Performance on my M2 is phenomenal and the development tools for macbook (homebrew, raycast/alfred, etc) has recently just taken off and is phenomenal. It is a bit of a luxury, and you can get away with just a windows, especially if you do a lot of gaming. But if you develop a lot, recommend you at least try out a macbook. Its a luxury and i'm a cheap ass, but i program way too much to cheap out on optimizing my workflow
Imo if you're solo, Linux is fine, if you're working on a team and want to share tools and local build instructions easily, Mac is pretty necessary. Also if you need portability the m chip MacBooks are the only thing I can stand to use away from a desk
no