Don't Buy a Mac for Programming or Cybersecurity

[@justinmccoy]

You having a tiny apartment, old computers, and a Tesla is the most NCO thing I have ever seen.

[@RyanMcBethProgramming]

Don’t forget the liquor.

[@Lafayette_Ronald_Hubbard]

@@RyanMcBethProgramming Does "bike in apartment" also go on that list, or is that a different one?

[@jimmiller5600]

@@RyanMcBethProgramming & cigars.

[@rebturtle]

An E1-E4 would be similar, but with 35% compounding interest on the car - which had been bought dirt cheap as a salvage/repo by the dealership just outside of the base and sold for 140% of it's bluebook value.

[@Hansengineering]

It's around a $5000 bike, too.

[@TheBobcat418]

I’m a third year CS student and mostly a Linux guy, my main system is a Ryzen 5600g with 32gb of ram and an ultra wide monitor. I have two laptops, a cheap Celeron machine with Linux that I use like the chromebook you mentioned, and a 14 inch MBP. I got the Mac cause I like doing creative work on the go and to be honest, wanted to explore how far ARM had come for desktop use, in addition to some iOS development. The killer feature of the Mac for me is honestly the battery life, in part due to the ARM processor but also the reliability of sleep. I’ve had a few windows machines over the years and have yet to find one that holds a charge nearly as well as the Mac while sleeping between uses. The Mac software ecosystem does annoy me though since so many things are paid that are free on Linux, I’m also a big VM guy and that’s complicated even more by Apple silicon. UTM (based on QEMU/Apple Hypervisor) is a good free option, as is the new VMware Fusion (free for personal use). I think my ideal laptop would be a fairly powerful but cheaper ARM based linux laptop in addition to my desktop, still waiting for that to come to market though. Great video and advice!

[@dfjab]

Yet linux only runs things that are just electron apps. If you are going for school, get windows. If you are a professional, you get a mac. If you want to ruin your day get linux. I'm sorry but my company is not paying me 100,- an hour to adjust the X settings coz something got fucked again with the new display i connected. I have yet to meet an operating system that is not macOS that can deal with non 4k 200% scale and 100% scale screens attached without murdering itself.

[@hebestreitfan6973]

Waiting for a powerful Linux based ARM laptop? They exist, they're called MacBooks.

[@sams.3552]

@@dfjab This is just a shortsighted take, Linux's desktop environment is wonky but operating systems aren't just desktop environments-- there's no formula, it's just about what tradeoffs you're willing to make, and where you're willing to make them. I personally like Linux for laptop and server, BSD for server, Mac for desktop and laptop, and Windows for video games and nothing else. I don't use Linux because it works well with my multiple monitors, it doesn't, but to me it is more important that I have a functional and lightweight C toolchain and that I have raw access to perf counters than it is to have a functioning desktop sometimes. I also like installing precompiled command line apps.

[@labadaba5088]

Oh we're doing Capitalist flexing now? Of money I have acquired myself, an overpriced Dell Optiplex 7020 with an i7-4770 16GB RAM AMD HD 7950 Boost with the capability to run Windows 7, 10, 11 and MacOS Monterey NATIVELY. The latter operating system was through Hackintoshing, pretty cool stuff. Now I do have a Macbook Pro 2019 15' with the 2.3GHz i9 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD so yeah! I have access to 6 other computers, but I don't really use them that often but I will list them in order from most often used to least often used. 1. An Acer Chromebook Flip 311 with the AMD A4-9120C 32GB eMMC storage and 4GB RAM from my school, borrowed for my career technical class. 2. A Lenovo Chromebook 100e 2nd Gen MTK with the Mediatek MT8173 32GB eMMC storage and 4GB RAM borrowed for general school activities. 3. A Dell Optiplex 990 with the i7-2600 16GB RAM 2x1TB HDD storage NVIDIA GTX 660 4. A Dell Optiplex 3020 with the i5-4590 8GB RAM 512GB SSD and 80GB HDD 5. A Toshiba Satellite A105-S2001 with Intel Celeron M 390 with 512MB DDR2 RAM ATI Radeon Xpress 200M from 2005. 6. A Toshiba Satellite C655-S5049 with Intel Celeron 900 Intel GMA 4500 Graphics 640GB HDD and 2GB of DDR3

[@Stealth86651]

@@dfjab That's an incredibly naive take. Linux is literally the backbone of the internet, so many servers and services run off Unix/Linux. While most people who shuffle papers use Windows and very few companies use Mac, you'll still run into and use Linux quite often.

[@AndyFarnham]

I used to be IT manager at a secondary school which also was a 6th form college (17-18 year olds doing their pre-university qualifications and the like). I had a dad call me asking about a Mac book air his son claimed he would need in 6th form. I explained that for what they'd be using it for, a less expensive Windows laptop would be more than enough. "Oh great, he's got a gaming laptop, would that be up to it?" said the dad, and I told him it would be more than up to the job. "Brilliant! I think you've just ruined someone's Christmas!" he laughed :D

[@ExodentalCADAcademyofNorth]

If a kid is a gamer and asks for macbook then he wanted to become a vlogger, graphic designer or to impress some girls at shool.

[@AndyFarnham]

@@ExodentalCADAcademyofNorth I did say to the dad that the kids at school with Macbooks got them as a status symbol rather than a practical need

[@Driretlan]

@@AndyFarnham Man, here I am going back to when the status symbol was having the CD player with 60-90 seconds of anti-skip buffering lol

[@AndyFarnham]

@@Driretlan 1990 still feels like it should be only 10 years ago to me 😁

[@Driretlan]

@@AndyFarnham thanks I hate it

[@greyfin10]

While I am not in cybersecurity (and that may be why your are not recommending it), for general development and systems, daily driving a Linux workstation has had MANY synergies for me learning my way around the shell and systems in general. The Linux mindset is geared towards becoming extremely productive for the sorts of lower level things I need to do professionally. And while I grant you that you showed VMs as being "a few clicks away", I'd say there's a very real difference when you commit to making Linux your main squeeze.

[@0x007A]

Spinning up a VM under a Linux distribution as host OS is no more difficult than under Microsoft Windows as the host OS.

[@teknikal_domain]

@@0x007A Immediately, no. If something goes wrong, yeah it takes more time. Sincerely: linux systems administrator.

[@Google_Does_Evil_Now]

Does Linux still require you to assess the hardware chipset for every device in order to make sure there are matching drivers available for the distro and hardware? While Windows just works with everything... Most of the time, all of the time!

[@0x007A]

@@Google_Does_Evil_Now 99.9% of the time hardware is automatically detected and no manual intervention is required. At this point it just works.

[@teknikal_domain]

@@Google_Does_Evil_Now for the past 8 years I've not had that problem.

[@FarmerDrew]

This is a certified Windows 7 Home Office Edition moment

[@nvelsen1975]

@@StefanHundhammer You don't need support.

[@No-mq5lw]

Windows 7 is by far the worst option. May seem fine now, but it's slowly getting chipped at by bad actors until it's just as bad as XP

[@nvelsen1975]

@@StefanHundhammer You don't have critical security problems. Unless you plan to click every link in every e-mail you ever receive, and run every executable that ever enters your system.

[@Katiedid1975]

HA!

[@andrenon1139]

​@@nvelsen1975 as student of "cybersecurity and financial defence" course - If the hacker interested in u there is almost no ways to defence computer and data for people who don't know how to hack. So big Base of knowledge u should know

[@jeroenstrompf5064]

I switched from Windows to Linux in 2007 and never looked back. One aspect I specifically like about Linux, is not being dependent on big companies like Apple or Microsoft

[@behradh]

Except medium companies like Canonical, Red Hat and Valve. Let's not forget, Microsoft also contributes a lot to Linux. Jokes aside, if not for big companies providing support and drivers, Linux would not be where it is today. Yea it's open source and everything but not every little thing can be achieved by independent programmers.

[@Belgarathe]

How did you get into Linux? Trying to really make it my daily driver

[@jeroenstrompf5064]

@@Belgarathe I had a dual-boot system Windows + Ubuntu. I found the first year of adopting Linux, quite traumatic although I can't imagine anymore what was so hard about it. There were a couple of programs for which I didn't have a replacement under Linux (Google Ads Editor being the most important for me). Some of these I could run under Wine and some on my Android tablet/phone. I haven't had a dual-boot system or any Windows system for years. I moved from Ubuntu to Linux Mint around 2011 and I still use that

[@Buorgenhaeren]

​​@@jeroenstrompf5064 switched to arch with bspwm as my daily driver a month ago from windows with 0 linux experience and i wouldn't say its traumatic, more like you're forced to learn what your system is actually doing instead of having to rely on simplified GUIs

[@balcopc]

I think we have 4% of the market covered. I supported Windows for a fortune 500 during the 2008 financial crisis and went to Linux shortly thereafter. Never again 😀

[@robertopreatoni]

A cyber security expert promoting a VPN service (today the biggest scam of the world) doesn't add up. Besides, I have been a regular speaker at the most known hacker conferences in the world (DEFCON, HITB, Chaos Communication Congress etc etc) and I'd say 80% of the hackers/ITsec experts used Macs.

[@onerimeuse]

The single greatest productivity enhancement I've ever experienced was a multiple monitor setup. I always thought it was stupid until the army has our stations in the TOC set up that way and I got used to it. It was an uphill learning experience going back to one.

[@magfal]

Im up to 6 30 inch monitors and I'm not downgrading. Edit: now 8

[@ian_b]

Same. Once I'd used two monitors at work, one at home was unbearable. Now I have 3 at home. I look at people hunched over a laptop with its dinky single screen and wonder how they get anything done. Fine if your entire workflow is email and messaging apps I guess.

[@apip6387]

Hmmm..I found it difficult to use laptop screen while I was travelling after using double monitors at work office. Since I like to travel and work, I stopped using double monitors and stuck to laptop. So, I can easily travel. I guess I have my priorities :-).

[@sugasheeze]

I find multiple monitors are a time waster, actually. You have to physically move your head to context switch and view everything. My workflows are much faster using a single screen with a decent tiling manager (like i3).

[@petedavis7970]

Now that I'm using ChatGPT pretty much all day as part of my job, I need a third monitor. One for development, one for testing in the browser, and one for ChatGPT.

[@BonkoTheFat]

i think it's also important to know what kind of programming environment the school will be using. i worked somewhere that was very heavily integrated with visual studio, sql server, etc. and it was a nightmare for everyone who had a mac. but of course, whenever we had to do a bug fix for iOS we had to pull out a macbook.

[@shadow0511usmc]

I agree with your statement but in a slightly different way. The University that I attended was heavy into the Apple Platform and majority of the Professors used Mac's and that is how they instructed. Could it all be done on another platform, but it just causes more barriers to learning curve that was alway going to be fast paced in many ways.

[@512TheWolf512]

@@shadow0511usmc apple really screwed us even in education, huh? God damn

[@cmsjr123]

@@shadow0511usmc lucky for you both. Mine was Linux…. That’s was an interesting time. No visual studio, or Xcode. Straight up terminal only and text file editing lol

[@Dave5843-d9m]

My 2012 MacBook might be no programmer’s tool but it’s still going strong after 10 years and feels as fast as it ever did. It won’t do video editing but then it never did that.

[@johnbla-u4e]

if you haven't done it already, upgrade your ram to 16gb and change the harddrive to an ssd. My 2012 is still my workhorse, I program on it with no problems. I've even edited 4k content on the thing, its a beast.

[@drach420]

I got a 2018 MacBook pro a while back, and ended up mostly coding and doing reverse engineering projects within Linux VMs. I paid a premium just to end up using debian anyway.

[@ananon5771]

I mean, it did what it needed to do.

[@drach420]

@@ananon5771 it did.... but the touch bar turned out to be extremely problematic, and I spent about 50% more than what I would have for a comparable machine.

[@ananon5771]

@@drach420 i know, im just being a bit facetious.

[@andrewwasson6153]

I can’t imagine using a Linux VM in my Mac unless I was targeting really specific Linux API stuff. I spend about 90% of my time in shell sessions within MacOS on a daily basis and sometimes on a remote CentOS server via SSH. There are a stack of other servers I work remotely with as well but I don’t know what flavor of Linux they are. For me it’s pretty seamless but that’s just my experience. I made the leap from Windows to MacOS in 2009 and very nearly moved to Debian instead. It’s been my favorite Linux for more than 20 years.

[@skinwalker69420]

I hope you installed Debian to the machine instead of just using it in VMs

[@AndrejPodzimek]

False dichotomy starts already at 0:15. 🤪 I’m struggling to understand why anyone would want a Mac or a Windows machine to study computer science. I studied computer science, all the way to a PhD, I work in computer science, and yet I have *never* used a Mac or a Windows machine. When someone asks me if they should get a Mac or a Windows machine, my answer is *neither* - always strive to stay in control of your software, do not let bad closed-source software control you.

[@XSmile2008]

Macs on m1/m2 are top stuff here in Ukraine right now. The battery lasts full working day. And performance when running on battery is the same compared to when powered from the wall. This is critical because Russians should not be visible in thermal scope. The build quality is excellent, the screen is just awesome. It is somehow unpleasant to work on my old Thinkpad T480s after experiencing a 16" MacBook pro.

Also the build quality is strong enough to double as a bulletproof plate ;)

[@NonEuclideanTacoCannon]

How well do VMs work on the m1/m2? Does it emulate x86 instruction set?

[@XSmile2008]

@@NonEuclideanTacoCannon Two years ago there were some issues with Cocoapods and Android studio with Android emulator. As for today for mobile development everything runs natively without Rosetta. No issues at all. I didn't try to run VMs, but Docker runs fine.

[@somebrains5431]

I dumped the vms on my Mac and rely on Docker. ARM forks can be odd and require workarounds that you need to freeze your updates. Distros being ported to Apple Silicon are all over the place currently.

[@Alan.livingston]

Running a 16” m1 for work and I can work all day, move around to meetings and such, and never have to even think about a power cord. Haven’t tried running vm’s on it yet, mostly do that on Linux based servers, but there is generally very little issues to be had with things not running correctly now it’s a few years old.

[@mishasawangwan6652]

this video is a bit misleading. you can’t make such a generalized statement and expect it to apply across the board. it all depends. apple silicone is next gen and those are beautiful machines. btw i run all systems (my credentials: windows, mac m1, various linux and several chromebooks). i love them all for different reasons.

[@Thesaltymaker]

I like the Chromebook concept, but for the desktop I went Linux years ago, and have not looked back. Windows has an obsession with making the experience worse with each release. Also, Steam works the same for the games I play.

[@MrNicoJac]

What Linux would you advise that comes closest to a Windows 7 experience? I like the Linux Idea, but I just do not want to spend a lot of time getting drivers to work or getting used to new file explorer and Taskbar stuffs 😅🤭

[@Eyerleth]

@@MrNicoJac Ubuntu has a variant called Kubuntu, which comes with the KDE desktop environment, which is very similar to Windows.

[@MrNicoJac]

@@Eyerleth Thank you! :)

[@MrNicoJac]

@@dfs-comedy That sounds like it might be enough. Thanks for the suggestion! :)

[@firetecstudios1146]

@@Eyerleth You can literally modify KDE to look (and sort of function) like anything (desktop related)...

[@MrC0MPUT3R]

I'm a professional senior backend (mostly) developer. My company provides all the employees with MacBook Pro laptops. The one reason I would maybe splurge on a MacBook is for the battery life assuming you're getting an Apple silicon version and you'll be away from your desktop fairly often. I don't do much with VM's but I do use Docker heavily (which runs in a VM yes) and it's more than sufficient for my needs. My company has multiple web services as well as databases, caches, and queueing systems that all need to be running to test end to end locally and I never have an issue spinning them all up in docker and keeping them running in the background for an entire day on battery.

[@CyberFreaked]

Same here seniot developer, and I worked on macbook but I prefer my own laptop with linux it's just works smoother / better and I can do more things with it. I really hate the apple ecosystem and I want freedom. A macbook is in my eyes just a show off, and yes they are reasonable good build, battery and silent etc but that's it the software stack is horrible.

[@jareczek7822]

@@CyberFreaked you can install Windows on mac if you like hardware and hate OS :) Unfortunately installation linux on new mac's is not possible now

[@differnet]

Hey, battery life.... There is this funny thing called electricity. It comes from plugs in the wall. How much programming do you do where you can't plug in?!

[@MrC0MPUT3R]

@@differnet a decent amount actually. I take my laptop and work when I travel.

[@-Blue-_]

​@@jareczek7822what about if someone hate both the hardware and OS ??

[@xyz-uw3ps]

I'm a software engineer and I do the exact opposite of everything mentioned in this video. Not a criticism, just saying 😄

[@xyz-uw3ps]

@ real

[@ahmadrtube]

“when a $1,000 [fanless] M1 laptop can outdo a maxed-out, $6,000 MacBook Pro with quadruple the RAM and Intel’s best chip, while also running cooler and quieter in a smaller and lighter form factor and with twice the battery life, where do competitors even go from here?” -TheVerge

[@somebrains5431]

You can use UTM on a mac, problem is there is a wide range of issues running VMs on Apple silicon from annoying to broken. Tools for Sec is a minefield on Apple Silicon, a notable one for students is Packet Tracer and SQLWorkbench is utterly broken. RESOURCES: Anyone in a constrained environment doesn't have the $100 range of options others have. High level thought, desktop components can be replaced cheaper than mobile device components (if at all). Writing code on a Mac is fine, the testing and shipping part again is all over the place. Someone learning needs to not manage edge case hardware and dependencies. That's not part of the deal in any country but people always go down the hardware sidequest. Like video editors that have to run all AMD on Linux, it's not an ideal or advised solution, it's a side quest taking you away from your goals.

[@JonasBergling]

Solid advice! Also, I tutored hundreds of students at a department of Computer and Systems Sciences before i left university last June. I could make a pretty good guess as to what degree specialization any particular group were getting just based on what mix of laptops they had: "Enterprise Systems and Service Design", "Business Administration & IT", or "Market Communication & IT": 70-100% Mac, the rest Windows, mostly smaller models "Interaction Design" or "Digital Media": 50-100% Mac, the rest Windows, more of the larger models "Computer Science and Software Engineering" or "General Computer and Systems Sciences": 10-40% Mac, 50-90%, 10-20% Linux, mix of smaller and bigger models Computer Game Development: No Macs, 80-95% Windows, the rest Linux, mostly 15-17" gaming models

[@mpconbeer]

Worth pointing out that all of this virtualization and remote desktop stuff will 1) Prepare you for the workplace and 2) This kind of Homelab looks really cool on a resume especially with non technical folks (like the recruiters and hr folks you get to get through to get to an interview)

[@daveinpenn]

You put your home computer's specs on your...resume?

[@takeguard]

@@daveinpenn bit on the nose... you don't say you've got a homelab, you say you have experience in virtualisation such as x,y,z.

[@d00mch1ld]

Like you said, depends on your application. I used a Mac for programming during my CompSci degree. Mainly CPP, Java and Object C. Most of my subjects needed you to compile on the University servers anyway, so it didn’t matter what you used. But I always found with my Mac, I could just close the lid, pop it into sleep and catch the train. The battery life was also so much better than my PC colleagues.

[@Belgarathe]

Added the benefit the screen ratio show a tad bit more lines of code

[@porroapp]

If you want to develop Apple apps like for iPhone, you need to use a mac to run xcode.

[@CharlieMartorelli]

VMware is free for personal use on a Mac. I have my some of my Macs setup up dual boot with linux. But the whole Mac vs window thing is personal choice. My advice for students is to ask the school which setup would be the best. I think the intel NUC is one of the most underrated computers out there, they are powerful and sip power.

[@KellyBergerDeusVult]

Ive been writing code since 1975. In tech, the best tool depends on the environment and capability, plus what your employer will support for integration. Most shops are going with tools that push quite a bit off into the devops world. I could do most of what I need to for light web dev through a high end chromebook, using linux in dev mode. You will pay about the same for a windows laptop - high end chromebooks are insanely capable these days and made for gaming (steam) with the generation coming out now. Slightly more for a mac (you will get way more than a code/compile machine). The barrier to entry really is what you are familiar with and how much time you need to integrate into a work environment.

[@andrewschliewe6392]

exactly. You don't need machines to push changes to your various environments, that's what's DevOps is for. All a dev needs to do is be able to push their changes to the repository in DevOps. From there DevOps takes over and does the rest.

[@alexmackinnon5810]

I can do four monitors on a mac, if you know how, 30 years of dev and once you go mac you won't go back.

[@shaunstewart4064]

Been writing software professionally for over 40 years. I agree 100% with you. Yes that means punched cards at the beginning 😀.

[@kalzhae]

I would actually kinda disagree with the "it only excell for ios" I'm a mobile developer, we use company provided computer, both our Microsoft option and ios option are last gen computer of each category, yet for Android development we have a difference of literally minutes of compilation time between our mac and our windows laptop. I would say it depends of the tech you're doing and you should research ahead what brand give the best performance for your tech.

[@greybread301]

For my computer science degree I went to a brick and mortar school. Going to the library, friends dorms, and the CS hall was a must in order to collaborate on coding projects. If you’re doing your degree entirely online it’s a different story but for in person classes a decent laptop is a necessary. I don’t think I could have gotten my degree without taking my laptop to a friends house on a whim to have them help me with a bug

[@lophilip]

I'm an old dude, that went to school when laptops were a luxury/novelity. While I agree that multiple monitor support is good, having mobility (especially in school) is paramount. I don't think I can recommend a desktop in today's world. To get the extra monitor support, I use an external GPU. I do load up my computers with lots of ram.

[@EwanMarshall]

Well, that is the point, small and light and easily portable and cheap, as said, remote to desktop if you need grunt, this is what I did for my degree over a decade ago. In fact the entire CS dept computer lab was based around a few linux servers the students worked on for submission and was always available to remotely log into for whatever the students needed.

[@jaredwilliams8621]

@@EwanMarshall As an actual developer, this is still what I do. I keep all my IDEs and code on my desktop at work and remote in from my laptop. When my work was getting new laptops, I requested that rather than give me a high-end laptop, that they give me a mid-grade one and a dock so I could have more monitors while working at home. Really, all the laptop ever does is run Firefox, Remote Desktop, and Teams.

[@Belgarathe]

This was what my really smart classmate did. He remoted to his desktop. Why? He could do it from his iPad, laptop or even someone else’s computer. Plus added benefit it’s never in danger of being lost

[@javaman2883]

I found out how necessary a laptop was in college too, back in 1999. Back then 2/3 to 3/4 of computer science students had laptops in class, carrying a power strip in your backpack was almost as necessary as the laptop. Battery life wasn't as good back then, few laptops could go past 2 hours on a charge.

[@somethingorother7440]

As a core operations engineer I feel it should be noted that the number one thing you want to look for is functionality but the number two thing to look for is collaboration. If your using a mac book and you have a weird file type your coworkers will hate you and your employers will just not allow you to use that tool.

[@iEdwinT]

Your employer should be providing any and all devices to get work done. Also, interoperability between Mac and Windows is trivial.

[@aegiltech]

@@iEdwinT Many orgs will just give a bursary for a device now

[@512TheWolf512]

@@iEdwinT that what you in america think. Not everyone can afford that. Entitled? Hell yes.

[@tankerkiller125]

@@iEdwinT Your right, and employer should be providing all devices for work... That's why where I work we only deploy Windows, and we don't give a damn about user personal preferences.

[@somebrains5431]

Mac users that know what to add to gitignore are more self aware.

[@robertstorms3469]

Great video, as usual. However, I didn't think you'd be so foolish as to stray into the religious holy war that is choice of OS! As a long-time computer professional, I get asked all the time, "What computer should I buy, Mac or PC?" My answer is usually, "Yes." The Mac vs. Windows question is further muddied with the advent of Apple Silicon. Those machines do not have the same virtualization tech as the Intel machines, but they have such great power and battery life. What it really comes down to is your answer to "What are you going to do with it?" If you want least maintenance on an appliance to read/write email and watch cat videos, get the cheapest iPad and have at it. If you're developing software, you'll likely need more than 1 computer. Personally, I prefer Macs, but I'm not going to shame someone that buys a Windows machine because that machine does what he needs done. As far as cyber security, there is merit in having multiple OSes available. Malware written for Windows will likely not affect MacOS, and vice-versa.

[@royvirafayet6687]

Why do you use apple? Are you bad so with technology that you need to limit yourself to an ecosystem of only apple?

[@Xanzkin]

​@@royvirafayet6687what a odd comment

[@G1NZOU]

It's interesting that Windows is also getting into ARM silicon as well, sure they dabbled in it when they first introduced the Surface, as Windows RT, but while it had some advantages it had problems as well. Now that it's maturing and they're bringing out more ARM Windows machines we'll see competitive battery life options.

[@bsadewitz]

@@royvirafayet6687 Huh? Who says I have to limit myself to apple? I can run linux natively on this thing if I want to. I can build all the open-source software I want. In fact, I don't really use any of apple's services for anything. I use firefox and a chromium build for web browsing, vlc and occasionally kodi to watch videos, etc. I got this m1 on sale for pretty cheap, and it does what I want and draws hardly any power. The thing doesn't even heat up. At all. For the amount of money that I had to spend (not much), it actually got me more than a PC would have. If I tried doing what I do in 8GB of RAM on this thing on a windows machine (or even linux on intel), it would be a joke! Everything (including the internal storage) is on the CPU die. People focus on the fact that you can't upgrade it, but so what? I can attach external storage if I really need it, and it's plenty fast enough. I like MacOS a lot more than windows--at least for me personally. I can boot Asahi Linux and use that if I want to, although I haven't in a while. The only thing I'm aware of that this doesn't do that you can do on intel is nested virtualization, and I couldn't care less about that. I was really nervous when I bought it because of the only 8G of RAM thing, but I have to really beat the hell out of it to get it to choke. Having the internal storage in the same package as the CPU is @#$ awesome. I can't emphasize this enough. And this is something that no intel-based machine offers, as far as I know. Now, would I ever buy an iphone? Hell no. Android is difficult enough to wrangle if u actually want to have any control over it. But I'm sure for a lot of people, iphones are great. Bad with technology? Well, I don't really code, but I have been employed as a system/network admin before. Just from your comment, I can tell that I'm definitely "better" with technology than you are, lol. Fanboyism is really lame. There's a use case for just about everything--and I really mean everything.

[@bsadewitz]

As of the m3, that won't be the case anymore. I'm not really a programmer, but I'm with you: "yes". If it works for you, then use it. Period. I'm really not into fanboyism, and tend to be a contrarian when people start going down that road--which is all the time. I like using all different platforms.

[@ameliabuns4058]

Lol as an iranian I had no idea about the apple stuff we don't have any official stores for anything. we always buy anything trough third parties.

[@AgniWatchLugun]

Another aspect of this consideration is that some software is only available for Windows, my girlfriend uses Revit for her architecture class and in her job, she could use Boot Camp or Parallels to get Windows on a Mac but doing mission critical tasks in such a roundabout way is really more trouble than it's worth

[@whenhen]

Especially if you’re learning IT, it’s pretty easy to spin up a Windows server within virtual box on Windows computers. You can’t easily do this on a Mac with an arm processor. Being able to poke around in on premise AD or other servers can be a huge help, especially given that the majority of organizations use a hybrid cloud and on premise approach to servers

[@HeyMakedonsky]

As a fullstack dev: I was desperate to buy a non mac laptop in 2018 as my personal mobile dev/home computer. I was willing to spend up to $4k. I tried everything including the most expensive hp, msi, asus, xiaomi and acers. Their hardware - frame sturdiness, tactile feel, hinges sturdiness, speakers clarity/loudness, microphone clarity, speakers loudness, screen quality/contrast/brightness range, and trackpad/touchpad accuracy felt like crap in comparison to 15” macbook pro. 4k$ competitors felt like crap in comparison to 1.5k macbook pro. There are tradeoffs of course(like non upgradeability and non-repairability, apple anticonsumer practices, etc), and the mac os which I dont like, but…. After release of apple silicon, there’s literally no competition even in raw horsepower per dollar, and still no competition on hardware quality after 6 years. Unfortunately, if you want something nice as a portable computer and okay with 1.5k per 5 years expense, and okay with free mac software, mac is the only good choice currently.

[@zipp4everyone263]

As a former IT student, ISP tech and now IT consultant doing hospital IT, Azure certification in the pipeline, hardware engineering and som pretty cool networking projects in my free time: Hardware matters, absolutely, but the client that you use to do coding, studying, general work etc on really doesnt matter. What matters is that you use tools that are adequte for your current tasks. I deal with issues ranging from someone not knowing what a computer is to extremely specific transport protocol timing issues as well as threat analysis work and the only stupid things i hear in my line of work are statements and "facts". Questions are never stupid imo and not knowing what a specific kind of PC does over another is just as important to me as the colour of the screwdriver il use to assemble my next network rack. IE: You can get really far without having to know everything.

[@dankuser8303]

What’s the story with the person not knowing what a computer is?

[@zipp4everyone263]

@@dankuser8303 well. I do IT for hospitals atm and I had this client contact me regarding getting two monitors to work. Long story short, we spent 20 minutes trying to identify the various devices she had plugged into the laptop. She called everything a computer and forgot what we had already identified like 10 seconds before. It boiled down to me telling her that everything isn't a computer and just trying to get her to not call a docking station, screen, mouse, laptop etc a computer... We managed to get it working and I'm pretty sure I had about five strokes during that 40 minute call...

[@Delgen1951]

Do not use a hammer to drive a screw, you can do that, but its real ugly.

[@CosmicHarmony58]

@@zipp4everyone263 Woman ☕️🤣

[@TheAnonymmynona]

If you build you own desktop and don't need a specific program thats only available for windows, or do gaming on the side, then you should consider just skiping the windows license and go with linux. You most likely will have to learn how to use it anyway (and its no that hard anymore). That being said what you need varies a lot depending on what kind of development you want to do, so if you already know what area of development you are going to do, look into what you need for that specificly.

[@toastrecon]

Heresy!! Lol. TBH, the quality of Mac hardware simply can't be beat. Anecdotal, but I've seen several Surface Pro's with battery and overheat issues. I frequently help family members with little tasks on their macs and realize that they're 5-10 years old and still running fine. The newest M1/M2 chips are simply amazing. Blindingly fast, absolutely silent, and the battery life is life changing. I also ran an M1 Mac Mini for almost a year and loved that thing. No fan, it took up almost zero space on my desktop and never slowed down for anything with Xcode or Node. I guess if I had ever run into a Win-only situation, I might have been in trouble. ARM support was a little rocky at first, but it's been more than a year or so since I've had any issues.

[@cetilly]

Anecdotally I’ve had the exact opposite experience; my Macs are inferior to my Microsoft Surfaces, particularly with respect to battery usage. In the past six years, I’ve had two MacBook Pros and two Surface Notebooks. I think you may be a little biased, because I just don’t know how you could conclude MacBook Pro batteries are any good, or that they don’t have significant heating issues.

[@toastrecon]

@@cetilly I guess we all have our own experiences. My M1 MBP has run ice cold for the more than a year that I've had it, and I've run it for 30-45min and had the battery level go from 100 to 98%. I help a lot of people with their hardware that fails, and I can tell you that it's almost never Apple. It's been interesting to open up the cases of both Apple and other products and see that stark differences in terms of quality and attention to detail. Metal instead of plastic. High quality connectors vs junk. The list goes on. To each their own, but the only non-Apple hardware I have are raspberry pis or maybe a cheap headless Linux box for home automation.

[@mikekeathley1120]

Native POSIX compliance with no fuss is an enormous advantage for Macs. Sure Windows has WSL, but it doesn't really work perfectly in all situations. For that reason alone, I still think a Mac is a good option for anyone who can afford it.

[@themasterofdisastr1226]

If I was to advice sb on grounds of POSIX compliance, I'd say they should get sth with Linux Mint. Far less expensive and you can actually repair it

[@mikekeathley1120]

@@themasterofdisastr1226 Also a good option. With that said, I tend to ruin a linux install and spend more time fixing it than being able to use it lol.

[@mrjakobt]

Apple silicon is a game changer though. I can work 12hrs straight with plenty of battery to spare.

[@FakeSchrodingersCat]

Is that actually worth it though, power outlets are not that hard to find.

[@prfwrx2497]

Utility wise for most people, yes. But for programming? Not yet - the architecture is completely different from the currently prolific x86 and x86-64 crap out there.

[@blutorlz3]

If low power draw is what benefits you. Others may be perfectly fine tethered by a power cable. Think about people doing cad/cam design work using GPUs with 24GB+ of ram… Those types don’t worry too much about battery life on a laptop.

[@erichwiehahn3402]

​@@blutorlz3 I'm a data scientist and my company gave me a 16 inch macbook pro - it's impressive how well it performs in ML

[@sammiller6631]

If you're sitting 12hrs straight, why isn't it at a desk with plenty of monitor space to spare? What keeps you from a wall outlet for 12 hours all day every day?

[@randynovick7972]

I have to disagree. If you're on a mac, you're running directly on top of a BSD (Linux!) kernel - all the fundamentals of a UNIX/Linux OS are already right there for you to access directly. It doesn't take an hour to get a BSD prompt - it takes milliseconds, and you have total visibility and control over your environment. Also, almost all of the server infrastructure you will work on in your life will be on a system V UNIX or Linux. The mac is running that same kind of file-based OS out of the box... all the tricks you have to play with memory and ownership and permissions and logs/filtering as part of diagnosing problems and fixing them on a server you have the ability to do on the mac, natively. The biggest minus to the mac comes in RAM and disk limitations - because they've gone the way of making those things hard or impossible to upgrade. If you are compiling C/C++ you will chew through RAM and beg for speed, but the M2 is surprisingly fast even on these things. Ryan, I'll defer to you on military things, but after working in software for 30 years (half of that on enterprise and another half on global-scale telecom) I think I come by my position with legitimacy... but it is, after all, my opinion. I also have opinions on VI vs. emacs, spaces vs. tabs and why COBOL will live forever. [wink]

[@ryanmark5710]

Gotta disagree on your Mac assessment. Apple has made it more difficult over the years, but MacOS is still a Unix operating system and you can run a lot of the same development tools you would run in linux on your Mac. On top of that, maintenance and usability is much easier on a Mac than on Linux, or even Windows in some cases. Just for context, I've been a daily driver of Linux and Windows for Web Application development, but I tend to always end up back on Mac. Although I think WSL on Windows is pretty great and I use it on my personal computer for non-work related stuff. For a student learning this stuff where cost is a factor? Go for a windows PC, mess around with WSL and get an extra large SSD and dual boot linux.

[@andrewwasson6153]

I have to agree. There is nothing in Linux bash that I can’t achieve in a Mac OS terminal. Also, Time Machine is the absolute bomb for keeping backups in case something tragic happens and it’s great for SSD upgrades too.

[@wiseguy8828]

Well….most tech companies use mac as standard issue for devs. The tools for developing directly on a mac are pretty great because more developers use macs. Windows is catching up though, and yes through a VM you can run Linux but you can use the bash directly on MacOS so it’s a “lighter” setup.

[@HTOP1982]

It's a easy decision when It's using some one else's money :)

[@wilfridtaylor]

Having to use a m1 mac for a year as a dev and now using Windows 11 for dev work. Mac being better for dev is a myth that has not been true for years.

[@wilfridtaylor]

Also not a lighter set up when the mac is using a different CPU to what your servers are. Intel emu on mac is slow as he'll.

[@TecHippy]

That's just not the case. You get a lot of front end 'developers' using mac because if you want to compile something for IOS you need a mac and android will practically let you use a toaster. No one who can't be replaced by a fresh graduate graphic designer uses a mac.

[@wilfridtaylor]

@Rowan Brooke yeah you only need a mac for ios. It has no advantages for anything else. In a lot of cases the arm chip is a pain.

[@robertotaglienti6406]

That's good advice. I've only just recently started hooking into a powerful computer in our office using a laptop normally reserved for a receptionist. Saves a lot of money company wide. Plus, you're constantly using your biggest investment for what it's designed for.

[@josav09]

I graduated as a computer engineer in a smaller country. We just used whatever old laptop we had dual-booting Ubuntu. Not until the end of my degree I saw benefits for having a powerful pc, but at that point I was compiling a CPU into an FPGA. Do take into account that most of my country uses Android/Windows, therefore we saw nothing related to Apple/iOS in college.

[@jacqueslee2592]

Which country? Good choice in using Ubuntu. Why support MacOS when Apple closes its market on majority of non-Western nations?

[@josav09]

@@jacqueslee2592 Costa Rica

[@jacqueslee2592]

@@josav09 I thought US believed in free trade in your region. Hence, why I boycott American products such as Apple as much as possible.

[@pilotpug]

Fair enough. Battery life on a mac has dramatically improved since the M1 and M2 chips though. Can work a full day on like half a charge

[@bretthagey7916]

The hardware is generally chosen based on the applications you are using or creating.

[@propellergarage]

Honestly, getting basic Macbook Air with M1 is very good deal for the buck. Not a necessity, but it is VERY competitive. Also, Mac Mini is a killer at 600$ or so, and has splendid linux support thanks to Asahi.

[@Harloe1]

The issue is a lot of university courses use certain software to teach, which most of it is not mac portable. I don’t know if this applies to all countries, but as a comp sci student at a high level uni in Canada, we’re all told to get windows operating systems

[@tobene]

@@Harloe1 When I has doing my CS degree, my Windows machine was a pain in the ass. No native Unix terminal meant you had to use some emulator for everything (GCC, git, vim, ...) Nowadays it seems more workable with the Linux subsystem in Windows

[@rightwingsafetysquad9872]

@@tobene When I was doing my CS minor, Ubuntu was a necessity, whether natively or in a VM. Having a Mac wasn't going to help. Unless they've changed, Apple Silicon Mac probably makes it more difficult than Windows PC because they distributed a VirtualBox image that all assignments would be tested on. Didn't matter if it worked on your computer if it didn't on that VM, immediate points off.

[@gregologynet]

​@@Harloe1 what software?

[@bobcprimus]

The only country that sells Apple products at affordable prices is America, so this point is not valid.

[@i-love-comountains3850]

I may have missed the video where you mention it, but how frequently do you work with the linux family in your cypersecurity work, and what are your thoughts on its utility in personal use and netsec contexts? Thank you for the video, Ryan!

[@TheSeventhEnd]

I'm not Ryan but I can answer this. It's often very context specific. However Linux is an essential tool in any engineering context. I seriously don't know of a situation where knowing it would be a bad thing. In personal use, ymmv. Some people daily drive, others use it purely in embedded context etc. It's totally about what tools it provides for your task.

[@basicdays]

Yup, agreed. It used to be that MacOS being more Unix-like was a huge advantage in favor of Apple. But now with Windows WSL2 and ability to VPN/remote into a machine from afar, it really doesn't matter anymore these days. Man it would have been nice to have that ability in college like 18 years ago. :P Btw, I use Arch as my daily driver... >_>

[@n12ox]

WSL2 is just an VM with horrible IOPS. If you want to buy PC and throw away double digit of its performance its even more stupid then buying Mac.

[@jeremybyington]

I had to edit videos on a Mac 20 years ago because it was the only OS that the industry-standard software supported. When I transitioned to be a web developer I was pleased to find out that Macs seemed to be the preference. Since the surge in popularity of VS Code, though, it doesn’t seem to matter.

[@goodtoshi]

​@@n12ox There is also Cygwin if you just need Unix/GNU tools and not the actual OS

[@n12ox]

@@goodtoshi cygwin is quite buggy and it actually nothing if you don't have to access underlaying devices. Also modern backend development is not possible without containers. So no, cygwin is not the solution

[@phateuk11]

WSL and WSL2 is a pile of shit, so is Cygwin and gitbash. All IT professionals who are worth a dime in the cloud space whether it's engineers or developers use MacBook Pros. Standard. Account managers and non tech people use Windows maybe, but that's it. Noone runs Linux desktops for actual work, it's too much blag. I'm saying this as a Linux specialist, I know more than most and even I wouldn't run one for work, there's not enough time in the day to piss about with my own workstation.

[@ChrisHall8908]

As a long time Linux user, I cannot recommend using multiple virtual desktops enough. This feature is natively supported in both MacOS and Windows in addition to pretty much every desktop environment/window manager on Linux I've seen. I have 9 virtual desktops on my work machine. These virtual desktops are great for things you need to keep open but don't need to be actively staring at (email, chat programs, etc.). So, you can have your documentation and code or whatever open in your "primary" desktop and your ancillary programs on other desktops that you can switch to with a quick shortcut. Also seconding the ultrawide monitors. I have two of them on my computer and these things are the best.

[@Alias_Anybody]

Wait, a MacBook can be used for something else than viewing pdfs and impressing girls?

[@thtcaribbeanguy]

as someone who develops web applications on linux machines having a mac was super beneficial for the fact they're both UNIX based

[@pabis6817]

The m-1 and m-2’s processors on the mac’s are fantastic. I probably won’t use a PC until I am convinced to do so. I do all my programming on a new Mac, with VS code with all the free extensions and absolutely love it! Idk, it’s silent, stays cool and is extremely fast.

[@klapiroska4714]

Well, yeah, M1 and M2 processors are insanely powerful, but in most settings (including CS) you basicly never gain any benefit from that power. For video editing or other high-end visual stuff it's an entirely different story.

[@devmech]

​@@klapiroska4714 having the shit you are working on recompile 10 times faster is a pretty noticeable quality-of-life improvement

[@HTOP1982]

@@klapiroska4714 Even then, software rules. VFX runs 99% on Linux, from workstations, to servers. The only things that are not linux tend to be spreadsheet computers, which are mostly Mac.

[@cetilly]

Not a good reason to pay a premium price for a Macintosh. Particularly since the productivity/keyboard shortcuts really suck on Macs.

[@devmech]

@@cetilly Sure it is. Macs perform Linux / Unix like desktop functionality perfectly. With the added benefit of mainstream desktop software compatibility. It's a win-win. And you can set up all the keyboard shortcuts you like. I've even done some myself 😁

[@tomdchi12]

VMs really changed this calculus. The ability to always have access to a *nix/Linux environment within a VM within Windows takes away what used to be a big issue.

[@andrewwasson6153]

That’s funny. When I switched to MacOS, I was happy to have the UNIX underpinnings and used VM’s to virtualization Windows so I could refer to my old Windows files and databases. Eventually I moved on and haven’t virtualized windows on my workstation for about 7 or 8 years. I left windows about 13 years ago.

[@blutorlz3]

The dollar value is not with the Macs. A lot of the software suites formerly only available on Macs can now be used on Windows… it’s mostly a status symbol for folks. I only use them when replicating client bug reports.

[@darbyheavey406]

Buy an old Mini & upgrade the RAM. Fast, stable, and cheap.

[@blutorlz3]

@@darbyheavey406 I’d rather build a pc from the ground up. GPU prices crashed and there is a lot of power available for cheap. It’s probably been two decades since I’ve gotten an off the shelf build for my personal use.

[@andrewwasson6153]

@@blutorlz3 I’ve got the opposite POV. I came from a windows Linux background and moved to Mac about 13-14 years ago. I keep a windows 10 laptop handy for replicating issues but do all of my dev work on a Mac. My current rig is the least expensive workstation yet. It’s an M2 Mac Mini with 24GB RAM, 512SSD internal + 1TB SSD on Thunderbolt dock with extra ports. I spend 90% of my time in VS Code and a terminal window. Now that MS Office 365 is so seamless, I have no reason to use Windows. I’ve got a an ancient 2012 MacBook Pro I can take on the road too. It’s not a status thing at all; it just works.

[@blutorlz3]

@@andrewwasson6153 but also a very different use case with minimal effort on the GPU. I also work in a corporation with roughly 200 office locations globally and have to keep the average user in mind. Unix/Linux has many great use cases, won’t argue that at all. It does tend to have a more difficult learning curve but not an issue for techies.

[@rando-w5h]

Having a laptop for programming, specially for university saved my ass too many times, i had a classmate who had a beefy desktop and he had to bring hard drive to class every day with a backup for the vm and spend 10 min importing all of the work in the desktop provided by the school

[@___gg421]

For school this advice makes sense but when your doing professional programming you some kind of nix OS. Most people end up with MacBooks because enterprise tech companies don’t want you using some randomly configured Linux laptop. Also is 2023 use docker you don’t need heavy entire OS vms

[@MLHunt]

Ryan saying he has 32MB of RAM in his NUC is showing his age lol

[@geraldschittenhelm7386]

- Don't buy a Mac - Atlas VPN ad Neeeeext 😂

[@Kam1n1_]

I did the remote desktop thing because there was a time where my laptop was to slow for running vms. Experience was subpar but doable. These days if you're coding you can actually go a step further. You rarely need the gui of the os. So an option would be to just use your ide over sftp if it has that option. VS code can even run on a completly seperate machine. And you could just remote into that without even realising you're working on a remote computer.

[@5Melons]

I bought a Macbook because of the hype of M1 and thought it would be a great machine for school. What I didn't realize is that most of the programs I needed to run for assignments (I study IT network administration) were not compatible with macOS.. To backup Ryan's point in the video, it is more complicated/expensive to try and spin up VMs on a Mac (and to do just about any trivial task in my opinion). From one student to another, I advise you check what software requirements your classes have and factor that into your purchase decision. However, from my experience using both Windows and macOS while studying IT, you are more likely better off buying a solid Windows machine. That being said, the M1 Macbook Air is not a bad machine by any means, has the best battery life out of every laptop I've used. I think my issues are more with macOS and it's incompatibilities/lack of features

[@dacjames]

I agree on cybersecurity, but Mac’s are fantastic for programming in general. Unless you’re writing games, desktop applications, or server software that runs on Windows, Mac’s do the job extremely well. I lead software projects that target Linux with developers on both systems. The Windows developers have an order of magnitude more problems than the Mac devs do. WSL2 makes it better than it used to be, but still much worse than macOS. The ideal should always be to use the same operating as your software will run on, but running Linux on bare metal tends to be more work to maintain than most devs want to deal with. Not to mention, most corporate endpoint management systems don’t allow it. So for all software targeting Linux (which is most software these days), macOS is definitely the way to go.

[@randynovick7972]

Yes, this. A thousand times, this.

[@oferim11]

Meta gives software engineers a Mac. So did a unicorn I used to work for 2015-2016. Why Mac? Probably the reliability, closeness to Linux and better centrak admin tools. The Mac laptop replaces the desktop. A lot of the work is against a Linux VM devserver the mac connects to. I do not do any iOS development.

[@Hansengineering]

Good points all around. I'd much rather have a micro PC than a laptop for almost any actual work.

[@Leo.501]

"You whant to have a good computer for work, buy a high end gaming pc" this statement can work if you have good understanding of computer hardware in order to not get scamed , but in short if you are more advance the hardware might help very much in reducing the time of rendering, compilation etc, so it is very dependent on what are you doing and how often. Mac is terrible for beginers, I would go for a cheap but well balanced windows laptop at first and save up some more for a future new buy when you know exactlly what you need. For now a 6/12 or 8/16 intel/amd cpu and 16gb + 1tb or 512 Gb ssd will do the trick (integrated video if no or light gaming) and a decent laptop screen IPS maybe 16:10 aspect ratio will be a bonus for work. Rezolution 1080p but if the diference is not much a 2k will be the sweetspot for 16' 16:10 aspect ratio. Hope this will help a little and sorry for my bad engl. PS: I agree totally that a desktop computer will always be better than a laptop and get more hardware wise that a laptop, but I have write the above in case that this cannot be an option because you have to be on the move or plan to move a lot. Cheers!

[@DorinCiobanu007]

I agree with your advice to someone on a very limited budget. If money isn't a problem though, I love the flexibility and the battery life I get from my macbook. That said, ARM VMs are not that useful right now and not everything has an ARM docker image so I can see how it may not be a good choice if you really really need intel VMs.

[@MrNicoJac]

What do you mean with flexibility in this context? :)

[@NonEuclideanTacoCannon]

Eyyy I just asked about this on another comment. How does that work exactly? Does it emulate x86 instruction set, or do you have to use things built with ARM kernels?

[@___gg421]

just use docker…

[@zyeborm]

@@___gg421 cool so there are arm docker images for everything ever?

[@___gg421]

@@zyeborm as long as you can run the docker runtime ( you can on Apple Silicon) you can run any docker image the cpu is abstracted away

[@mattlawrence7130]

I'm currently using a ThinkPad W541 with 32GB & 2TB SSD running Fedora. It's at least 6 years old. Works great, but it's heavy to travel with. Older notebooks can be quite inexpensive. Max out the memory and make sure you are running an SSD instead of a spinning disk.

[@Ryan-ff2db]

Yes, this is absolutely correct. However to throw a wrench into things. If you are mobile constantly, laptops can support multiple monitors nowadays, thunderbolt allows this, so make sure the machine can support external monitors. Or do what I do and hook it up to one big ass 4K screen gaming TV with high refresh and let it act as multiple monitors. You can even tile it, if you want a separate monitor experience. Of course laptops are usually not as powerful but you can stack 64 gigs of memory like I have, so it handles VM's quite well.

[@albyx]

I was watching this and almost made this exact same comment. I own a Macbook Pro and a Surface Book 2 and it's incredibly easy to just hook them up to my monitors at home. When I need to roll out, boom, disconnect one cable and I'm good to go. The few things I do suggest is having decent space on the laptop (512GB at least), and at least 32GB of RAM. Both of my laptop machines have 16GB of RAM and I really wish I had one that at least had 32. Watching the memory pressure on my Mac machine gives me anxiety.

[@Ryan-ff2db]

@@albyx Exactly. Also have a usb hub to connect an external keyboard and mouse, its more comfortable for me at my desk. When I go out to the field I just unplug two cables so whatever I'm working on will come with me. It's great set up. Obviously, if you don't need to be mobile a desktop is better but for me I need the mobility.

[@imshail]

That is the issue, you're paying a huge premium for that, and as someone that went from laptop to desktop a huge thing you're also missing is that desktops are infinitely more repairable than laptops, where a laptop turns into scrap the second a part breaks because everything is soldered to the motherboard, a desktop is significantly easier to repair and you generally don't have to replace the entire thing

[@Ryan-ff2db]

@@imshail My current laptop is a Framework 12th gen. I can repair anything on it, added my own ram to 64GB and my own storage, you can even swap out the usb C for HDMI, or an SD reader slot for ethernet, whatever, if that's what you need. Replace the monitor, replace the board, whatever you want. If your situation requires a desktop then so be it but as I said if you need mobility the better solution is laptop with exterior hookups.

[@andrewwasson6153]

Yep. I’ve got a Mac mini M2 with 24GB RAM and the fast SSD. I’m using the Thunderbolt into a DisplayPort adapter into an LG 42” monitor. I use multiple desktop, spaces so I can have mail & calendar in one desktop space, Dev tools, VS Code and bash/ZSH in another, database and web server tools in another and one more for system monitoring. I can tile it as well. I used to use a 27” iMac with another older 27” iMac as a second monitor. This is as good or better.

[@greybread301]

I got my computer science degree using a Mac. Some software needed for my degree didn’t run on Mac but for the most part I found work arounds. But if you want to code for iOS you need a Mac. I had an internship which required a Mac. Macs are nice and have a lot of good features but the world runs on windows. Get whatever computer you want and don’t let the world judge you for it

[@talideon]

Now, it's also worth taking into account the kinds of tools you'll be using and what you're working on, and for me, those tools don't work particularly well under Windows. I spend my time writing mostly Go and Python at work, and also make heavy use of Terraform. Even with the likes of VS Code, the experience is at best clunky under Windows, and anything related to dealing with cloud providers, K8S, or anything in that realm is just easier under a Unix-like OS, so I run Ubuntu on my personal laptop, and use MacOS at work, as do practically all the engineering staff where I work. Management tend to be a mixture of Windows and MacOS. If I had to spend my time in VMs all day to get an environment that's at least vaguely close to production, I'd go spare. So, I wouldn't say "no" at all. It really depends on the circumstances. If you're going to want to do video editing, a Windows machine makes sense over Linux, but the only real reasons I can think of for recommending Windows over MacOS are gaming and cost.

[@don9270]

That's also been my experience at all of the tech companies I've worked at- the engineering teams were overwhelmingly Macs and the servers were always Linux. WSL2 works, but it's just not as clean. And while we love Linux on laptops, most of the MDM providers don't support Linux which means it's not an option at many companies.

[@loopie007]

I think you meant to say Oracle VirtualBox, not Openbox. Openbox is a window manager, where as VirtualBox is a virtualization application supporting most all X86 operating systems. It's free as it's built on QEMU (Quick EMUlator) an open-source emulator.

[@micr75i]

the audio quality you get from a Mac is unmatched in the PC world.. and also the fact that you have a unix shell natively it’s really a lot better than Windows! I mean who wants to do Powershell :)

[@hjf3022]

I do a similar thing. Decent desktop at home, Samsung tablet(with keyboard cover) for uni for taking notes, but if I need power and capability, I use Parsec on the tablet to access my home desktop. Keep in mind though, that it is common for university networks to block remote desktop traffic, so if your phone's data plan is expensive in your country, then your portable device needs to have capability by itself.

[@davidbohn8955]

I really enjoy the computer science content you do. Please keep it up!

[@MrEddieLomax]

I do chip design, these days its FPGA's. For those I'd recommend a desktop and it has to be a PC. Some people use Linux, I don't, but the important thing is the desktops allow you to have more memory (I have (128gb) - you'll struggle to find a laptop with more than 32gb, at least I did a couple of years ago. Other problem is heat, running processors fast generates a lot of heat. But a laptop is small and struggles to cool its components, my desktop has big air coolers on it and a lot of fans. I enjoy gaming too which is a bonus, my backup machine is a laptop, but it sits there turned off...

[@MMuraseofSandvich]

(Disclaimer: It's been a long time since I was in university, so a lot of things may have changed) I would say it depends on the curriculum. I went to a university that used Solaris and HP-UX everywhere, so any computer would work fine, but the systems liked to talk to Unix-like systems such as Linux or BSD. If the school's coursework requires Visual Studio for whatever reason, you should most likely stick with Windows as that will give you the fewest variables when you're troubleshooting. Otherwise I don't see any reason not to get an inexpensive PC and dual booting Linux on it. (Bonus: It's a bit harder to get distracted playing games as long as you stay on Linux and don't install Steam or Proton.) If there's any machine learning involved (and IMHO it's going to be big going forward), hopefully the school has servers with good GPGPU hardware you can access to train your models. If you need to do that on your own, well... you're gonna need a PC with the best Nvidia card you can get your hands on, because the training step often uses CUDA on Linux.

[@EwanMarshall]

OpenSSH is now natively available in windows, WSL2 gives a transparent easily accessible linux VM on windows (with GPU hardware acceleration on windows 11, though that might be an issue). Or just install linux on any windows laptop or PC. Still wouldn't choose a mac.

[@andrewschliewe6392]

Not necessarily, you can use cloud environments like MS Azure that you can spin up Machine Learning environment for a little bit of money and then power it down when your done.

[@EwanMarshall]

@@andrewschliewe6392 indeed, I did mention cloud, but if you are actually working in it seriously, you probably want something a little more local you don't have to worry about cost more than power bill when you want to use it. But those cloud systems are still using GPU or similar for actualy compute.

[@okolol]

2:28 bro stuck in the year 1990 with 32 megs of ram

[@oblivionsought7809]

As a programmer and vfx professional for a couple decades, this is the correct answer. Small shout out to ios/linux synergy, but if you need linux, dual boot on the pc is a better call.

[@KeithBoehler]

Linux is pretty underrated tbh

[@technerd9655]

There's also WSL2 on Windows, Linux kernel running in parallel and concurrently with the NT kernel, no VM in the background, can run multiple distros simultaneously too. I don't have any use for it, but seems like a dream setup for a developer and no need to dual boot.

[@andrewwasson6153]

@@KeithBoehler I agree. I’ve been using Linux of one type or another for about 25 years in parallel with Windows because of work demands. I started with RedHat, moved to Debian and have CentOS on a virtualized server I lease. Debian is my favorite if I had to choose. That said, I dumped Windows about 13 years ago (still have a Win10 laptop) and I’ve been using MacOS for my primary desktop for about 13 years. It gives me all of the bash goodness (ZSH now) I need but it’s a bit more luxurious on the GUI.

[@ebouwman034]

I’ve gotta say… the new M1 airs are basically like a chromebook that doesn’t suck and I LOVE that computer. BUT it doesn’t do anything for me I can’t do on my other machines and I wouldn’t own it if it was a choice between the M1 Air or a desktop + Chromebook. Mac’s are a luxury item NOT a better computer.

[@SamBao]

If you're getting into programming involving 3D graphics or game development or livestreaming, it might be worthwhile to get an expensive machine with good hardware capabilities. Another worthwhile question to ask is AI development, I have no idea about this sector so I'd be curious to see what kind of machine people uses for that (Or do you just let the cloud handle all the computing/compiling and write code on any average computer?)

[@EwanMarshall]

For AI, well really you are talking deep learning neual nets (machine learning has many other forms), well for that any linux or windows 11 computer (for WSLg support) with a really good GPU to offload the compute to (or having a server/cloud to go do that on works too). It is mostly aout the GPGPU compute ability, CUDA or openCL works, but CUDA is more popular currently so that pushes to Nvidia.

[@EwanMarshall]

@@innocentiuslacrim2290 Nice they have free student packages, but this is also a little worrying as that is similar to stuff Apple and Adobe have done to lock their services as the standard as that is what new hires know.

[@chumleyk]

I hope Ryan is purposfully saying he leaves his laptop in his car as bait.

[@kostiemuirhead8187]

With the major caveat that it can depend on the kind of development you want to do, using a good Linux setup for your dev environment beats the pants off both Windows and Mac. Obviously if you're primarily building desktop apps or games aimed at one of the other two environments, one of them will cause you many fewer headaches. But if you're doing server side work, terminal apps, or web applications then you don't have the same kind of tether to a specific OS. And of course if you have personal preference for one OS or another, that's fine, and you're free to make that choice.

[@angelsjoker8190]

In particular for the Iranian students to consider would also be the repair service situation. If Apple isn't allowed to operate in Iran, those students can't just go to the next Apple store to get an easy repair/replacement, but they can go to any PC store to get their PC fixed in case of any issues. Apart from Apple products probably being exponentially even more expensive due to scarcity in that country.

[@ananon5771]

Pretty good advice, though the new M1 and 2 are pretty good values by apple standards. a windows/linux PC will just be better for the most part.

[@rdumiak]

Actually you hit the nail on the head when you said “certain things will either be trivial on the Mac or you have to pay $200 more to get it to work”. If you’re going to be programming make effective use of whatever is available and you WILL be successful.

[@somerandomvideos645]

iOS, iPadOS, WatchOS, tvOS, MacOS programming => Macbook. anything else => Macbook anyway, because everything else just sucks. opening windows after using macos for a while = instant headache

[@DemoniqueLewis]

I am a CISO and I agree with the sentiment. I have a MacBook and fully invested in the apple ecosystem but when I want to do real work, I am on a cheap windows laptop using VMs. It was not worth the extra money for the MacBook.

[@danielvonkoppy]

Did you mean to say you have 32GB of memory on your nook and not 32MB? At like 2:25 in the video. Love the video btw. I got through programming school with a super cheap Lenovo. 100% agree that ergonomics is more important than cpu and ram. Get a huge 4k monitor and good keyboard/mouse instead. 🙂👍

[@afanasieguler7833]

Fair points, however you need to address a few issues, that's battery, fluidity and lack of internet. 1. A socket isn't always available to you, or just you don't want to search your bag for cables in each class. 2. I want a fluid laptop, I want those chrome tabs on my laptop not in a VM, I also want good trackpad and keyboard. 3. Not sure how universities are nowdays, but our had network issues, and I was in a country in top 10 for internet speed, it's hard to provide powerful internet for hundreds of CS students that might want to download lots of things with their powerful laptops. 4. I lived in a dorm with 3 others in same room, I didn't have a place to put monitors, my desk was shared, most of my time was in a library, I get more monitors are better but laptop monitor was all I got, I need the best out of it. Not everyone might be in same position, but lots are. Now these boxes aren't ticked by macs only, but in ultrabooks world macs are kind of the best. I took the bad route of buying a gaming laptop for CS, that's dumb, it had poor battery, it was poorly build, it had a very dim display, once I got a Macbook from work I used it for studies as well, it was much better and I didn't have any compatibility issues (each student got a small VM on university server, but I used that rarely)

[@soberhippie]

On the other hand, durability is also to be considered. Those new M2 chips seem like they will remain useful for a long time. As you said, you can run free VMs on a Mac, but my bet is that M-series chips will outlive the x86 architecture, and a laptop that can last for 10 years is a good investment

[@Dellvmnyam]

Just half a year ago I was so glad I was able to use my 2013 MacBook. And then it’s performance started dropping dramatically with the recent OS updates. It was so close for it to last for 10 years.

[@soberhippie]

@@Dellvmnyam I have a 2011 MacBook air that deteriorated beyond usable a couple of years ago, and I replaced it with that sexy M1 MacBook Air. At the same time, my parents are still using my 2008 iMac. I maxed out its memory and replaced HDD for SSD, and it stopped getting updates a few MacOS versions ago. I know upgrading is no longer an option, but it's amazing how long these things last. I remember my first PCs that, metaphorically, turned from jet planes to horse carts in 12 to 18 months

[@ihatemacs9]

i'm using 12 year old pc hardware on win 8 that is running circles around a 2018 macbook pro that is slowing down, with a buzzy SSD, 32GB of RAM that is struggling on a sluggish Mac OS. my time with an M1 chip felt the same. even if you could afford an M2, why not invest in actual tech rather than slick marketing?

[@TimBryan]

@@ihatemacs9 I’m gonna call BS on that. There’s no way 12 yr old PC hardware is running circles around the latest generation of Apple Silicone. There’s a reason why the biggest dev shops are switching over to Apple Silicone. Post your geek bench scores or STFU.

[@nivoset]

My (at least?) 12 year old linux laptop finally died on me. Was still using it for things like deep fake fun until about a year and a half ago (thats when it was about 12 years old at the newest based on stickers, i got it used)

[@kjamison5951]

Use the tool that suits the situation for you. Don’t get a Mac because of the perceived ‘prestige’. Mac happens to work for me and it does what I need it to do. If Windows works for you, get Windows. But look at the hardware. Don’t get Windows on a cheap laptop or desktop. Don’t load the computer you get with stuff you use once and don’t need again. Get rid of bloatware - a problem I have never had with my Macs. MacOS is a fancy front end on a Linux foundation. Windows is something else. Be careful what you click on in Windows and what you permit to run. Be sensible. I use MacOS because it doesn’t let me down. I’m not into cybersecurity or code writing, I design 3D models and I use Photoshop as well as Microsoft Office. I use Linux to watch my on-line streaming. I don’t use Windows because since Windows 7, I have witnessed first hand continual system failures and I just got fed up having to restart the computer, run ‘Recovery Mode’ and then find it failing again. I’m running MacOS and Linux on two Mac Minis from 2012 and MacOS on a MBP from 2015. I might decide to buy an Apple Silicon computer at some stage but I’m not rushing to commit to anything just now. The Windows OSes that worked for me when I had access to them were 3.1, 98SE, 2000 Pro, XP Pro and 7. Any others in between or afterwards just didn’t cut it. In work we have Windows 11, heavily locked down and it does what I need it to do, albeit slowly.

[@rafaelacash7]

Mac Mini/Mac Studio are the BEST Macs for value and are cheaper than Macbooks, it’s my go-to and recommendation if you don’t need the portability of a Macbook laptop. I’m excited to buy one next month if Apple unveils the M4 at WWDC June 10. Then the older models on Apple Refurbished will go down even more. Macs are NOT that expensive as people like to believe, it’s just a cope, they see the prices for NEW listed anywhere and they get scared but in reality, it can be cheaper, way cheaper…

[@vabue]

So it seems to be only two advantages of Windows laptop ever Mac: price and VMs. Agree regarding VMs, it's really needed for cybersecurity. For common programming tasks docker is quite enough, and it works marvellous on M1 Macs. But for $900 dollars for basic MB AIR you'll get better display, touchpad, keyboard, battery life in comparison of similar priced Win laptop. Another thing if we are talking about students, financial circumstances changes quite fast, and you always can trade your Mac for a decent amount of money. Can't say that about MS/Dell/Lenovo/Asus etc laptops. In general my opinion is if you passionate about programming - get any device you can put your hands on. Really soon you can afford anything you want :)

[@nvelsen1975]

Not being trapped in a predatory ecosystem in which most software doesn't even work is an advantage. As is being able to repair your hardware without having to shell out thousands at the Certified Apple Scam-shop. Not sure where you're getting the rest from. As Apple is crazy expensive you can get much better performance for the same money. Better battery life? Yeah for the few months it lasts yes. Before it breaks or 'breaks' because it's programmed to do so. You ever heard of a Lenovo reaching 12-15 months of age and going "Ohnoes I broke, you better pay $ 1500 to the certified Lenovo shop to fix me"?

[@vabue]

@@nvelsen1975 > Not sure where you're getting the rest from Just from my experience man, only from it. I use Windows, Linux and Mac laptops at the same time in my work. It just happened so. Switching between systems several times a day, trying not to loose my mind :) > As Apple is crazy expensive you can get much better performance for the same money Name the alternative for basic MB Air in terms of performance / materials / battery life / display for the same $900. I really would like to hear about it and advise for all of my friends.No, skipping one of the parameters wouldn't work. > Better battery life? Yeah for the few months it lasts yes. Manufacture date 2021-01-11, design capacity 93%, usage - everyday, charging - when you can. And looking into retrospective, Mac battery is quite easy to replace. >You ever heard of a Lenovo reaching 12-15 months of age and going "Ohnoes I broke, you better pay $ 1500 to the certified Lenovo shop to fix me"? Corporates like you only if you pay them money. But fortunately there are 3rd party guys that can fix Lenovo as well. Actually I think old T-series Lenovos are awesome on the budget, any students should just take it, install Linux and dive deep into Zerodays. > Not being trapped in a predatory ecosystem in which most software doesn't even work is an advantage. Ecosystems have their downfalls and great things. Macs sucks when you need system-level EQ, CAD systems, games, virtualisation, non-consumer device support. And Windows have awesome multidisplay user experience. But they give you POSIX environment, awesome memory management, a lot of Mac only apps and f**king Continuity which just doesn't have alternatives. Any system has its advantages and pitfalls, period. As for students of STEM focus it depends on budget what you should choose. $300 - used win enterprise laptop, $600 - used win enterprise laptop with upgrade, $800 Basic MB Air, $1200 Basic MB Air + used Windows HP/Dell desktop, $1500 Basic MB Air + used Windows HP/Dell desktop, $2000 some dell XPS or basic MacBook Pro M1/M2 + Pluralsight subscription. And yes, I understand that the person who is buying is young, so colours, Just my opinion. You can definitely disagreee, and showing off is important, so all our reasons just don't matter in a face of style :)

[@dolurosu]

@@nvelsen1975 The MBA M1 at launch was very close in price to equivalent windows ultrabooks while having way better efficiency and battery life. I've had mine for close to 5 years with no issues whatsoever and the battery still going strong. Having a Macbook does not trap you in an ecosystem. Your whole comment is just pure ignorance.

[@nvelsen1975]

@@dolurosu If you deny the Apple ecosystem, than you're either an Apple cultist or weird in some other way. Explaining is pointless since you wouldn't listen anyway. Have fun spending $ 1500+ on a phone.

[@mrcontrarian1416]

I am a Technical support analyst in a software firm here in west Australia & I completely agree with Ryan here. Good stuff

[@JamesMossR33]

Totally agree on your points here especially the multi-monitor setup, and being a full-time dev on PC there's no way I could use a single monitor setup again. I bought a MacBook Pro some years back to create an iOS version of my Android app after finding you're forced you to use a Mac computer. Now the MacBook can't be upgraded to a recent enough version to run XCode anymore. Even if there is some way to run an older version of XCode on it Apple wouldn't allow the app in their store, so yeah it's now an expensive web browser. Built-in obsolescence, using proprietary SSDs and non-upgradable memory no I won't be paying a premium again for any Apple device.

[@niceatrya3477]

I'm an IT director, and programmer. I loved using my MacBook Air because I would just Boot Camp it and run windows 90% of the time. That is until the M1 came along... 😡 I like the Macbook for how lightweight it was, battery lasted long, and the charging cable was magnetic, so no tripping over the power cord and damaging the charging port.

[@rightwingsafetysquad9872]

I am fortunate enough that my "portable machine I don't care much about" is a MacBook Air. The battery life you get with these Apple Silicon machines is spectacular enough that even though I don't like Mac OS, don't like the keyboard, and the trackpad isn't quite as good as my Asus notebook, It's still my go to whenever I'm going to be away from my desk. My PC notebook would be replaced by a desktop right now if I didn't travel ~80% of the time for work. I'm sure there was a time when Mac laptops were better hardware than PC laptops (aside from the CPU, which was the same). I'm sure there was a time when Mac OS functioned better than Windows (perhaps around XP and Vista). I'm sure there was a time when if you wanted a POSIX dev environment Mac was indispensable. But that isn't the case anymore. For several years now the only 3 reasons to go with a Mac have been 1) battery life, 2) developing for the Apple ecosystem, 3) it takes a lot less research time to find a machine suitable to your needs.

[@theloniousMac]

The reason I use a Mac is that I simultaneously run MacOS, LINUX, and Windows. It makes doing cybersecurity actually much simpler. I can run Windows in Linux virtual machines while my basic daily driver OS is macOS. The virtual machines are fast and I also keep clean copies of each just in case I burn one. You can't go wrong.

[@watchandlearnbet]

I’m thinking of getting the m2 air 16gb and 512ssd for my cybersecurity bootcamp, is this a good choice?

[@cassildaandcarcosa294]

Now that macs can have 64gb ram via the m1,m2 architecture. As a software Engineer, I rarely need VMs. Mac is pretty great platform for development. Everything just works. Very easy to debug env issues on a mac. I have not found that to be the case with windows and associated hardware.

[@rejekt2]

When I studied computer engineering I had a Pentium III 866 MHz. To travel I just took the motherboard, disk, etc. with me, assembled it on a desk and used a screwdriver to turn it on....laptops were very expensive back then

[@LMB222]

Linux. Not because it's cheaper, but because the GNU suite. Bash with grep, sed, tr, etc. will turn a computer science student into a f"king pro. (Yes, MacOS also has those tools, but why pay for a Mac?)