Why Software Engineers Prefer MacBooks

MacOs vs Windows vs Linux. This is why software engineers prefer to use MacBooks for software development.
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0:00 Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2021 Preferred Operating Systems
1:35 Do Most Software Engineers Use MacBooks?
3:21 Easier To Develop Apps On MacBook or Windows?
4:01 Is Apple Ecosystem Better Than Windows And Linux?
5:56 MacBook or Windows Laptop Better For User Experience And Peripherals
7:31 Is An Apple MacBook Worth The Price?
Other Chapters:
Preferred Operating System At Larger Software Companies
Windows Vs MacOs Performance Reliability
Mac Vs Windows Shell Terminal?
Which Operating System Is More Flexible For Software Development?
Connectivity Issues On Mac Compared To Windows
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[@pcip2733]

I'm a Software Engineer and I DON'T prefer MacBooks over Pcs

[@georgewashington3505]

Mac is overrated, and the compatibility is horrendous.

[@ramanavenkat715]

I 💯 agree with you

[@akin242002]

Same here with the exception of front-end web development or video editing. Macbooks excels in those 2 exceptions. Python, C#, Go, Kotlin, or Java can all be done effectively on a Windows PC using WSL or dual boot Linux distro. Especially using a Lenovo ThinkPad.

[@ericdraven7857]

Sounds like haters. MacOS runs windows better in a VM than on pcs. Vs code freezes on windows and is just trash. MacOS is great once 2020 came and they released M1.

[@akin242002]

@@ericdraven7857 I highly disagree. With 32 or more GB of RAM, Windows runs VS code and VS flawlessly.

[@theburntcrumpet8371]

I've been a professional developer since 2017. I've worked for 2 companies and neither gave me the choice of Mac. I use Windows 11 with WSL and it works just fine for the work I do. Maybe there's a regional aspect to this - windows could be more popular in the UK with Devs

[@SocajowaRS]

Majority of devs in US that aren’t working in big tech hubs that aren’t at big tech companies generally use windows. It’s kind of a similar coorelation why C# is really heavily used outside of tech hubs (excluding Microsoft), it’s the bread and butter for general non scale enterprise

[@jamescross]

May be some truth there. I live in a medium tech hub and at least for front end, even at the local conferences nearly everyone has macs but a lot of devops guys have windows.

[@gabrielbatista1221]

I think that, if you could filter that data by country, you would find out why Windows still takes the lead. You called Macs expensive but, as a Brazilian dev, a new Macbook could cost, easily, 2 years worth of salary depending on where you are and your job position. Some of the Macbooks cost more than some cars around here and the Mac Pro starts at around 79k BRL, which is 20k more expensive than my car that I bought new. Yes, there are a lot of Brazilians using Mac, I'm not one of those, currently on Windows and Linux, looking into the Mac environment and trying to justify the absurd price of a Mac. With that said, I can totally see why Windows is, still, the preferred OS for the major part of developers when you factor in the cost, the familiarity with the system and the fact that it is readily available, pirated or not.

[@jamescross]

very interesting perspective. thanks for sharing!

[@nickpeavy6554]

thats wild..

[@cedric182]

that's your own countries fault

[@gabrielbatista1221]

@@cedric182 that's true. We really have a bunch of economic problems that lead to this. But, apart from financial difficulties, we still have a bunch of other points that still stand on their own.

[@chromaether]

@@cedric182 understandable, some countries have expensive macbooks, other countries have life debts for using an ambulance and a school shooting every 30 minutes

[@josephvasconcelos5943]

I am a software developer working in a devops role and I just made the switch to macbook pro with the new M1 chip I don't think I will be looking back as far as my work machine goes. As far as gaming goes, i will be sticking with my pc

[@jamescross]

thanks for sharing!

[@percy9228]

please explain your reasons why you are favouring Mac, do you still hold that opinion?

[@joevasconcelos3409]

@@percy9228 I’m in a front end role now, and almost everyone at my job uses a mac, it’s integration with docker and Linux is incredible

[@SimSimsTECHcrunch]

I use all three for a variety of different use cases, but macOS and Linux are definitely my platforms of choice for development.

[@jamescross]

what’s your favorite linux distro?

[@SimSimsTECHcrunch]

@@jamescross I would have to go with Arch Linux because of the level of flexibility and customization it has.

[@jamescross]

cool

[@SportsIncorporated]

I don't remember reinstalling Windows since I bought the laptop in October 2018. It runs fine. It's a gaming laptop used for business. Ryzen 2700 processor, Vega GPU. My knowledge about Mac vs Windows stems from a few decades ago, around the end of the 1980's. ( I used a Mac 1989-2000 ) It seemed more people used Macs in Silicon Valley than in other places I'd lived.

[@jamescross]

Thanks for sharing your experience!

[@akin242002]

Same here. Had the Surface Pro 4 before I switched to tech. Ran well on 8GB of RAM for years. After upgrading, gave it to my daughter. It still runs well after all these year.

[@GetGwapThisYear]

Thanks for this. Just dipping my toe in, and working from a windows desktop atm (that I use for gaming). If I’m planning to pursue a career in front end dev, would you recommend investing in a MacBook sooner rather than later, or wait until I’m more experienced? Thanks

[@jamescross]

use what you have until you know what you want and need. i learned on a windows and it did just fine for a couple of years.

[@NerexisPL]

I work as professional backend software dev in the East/Center-Europe and out of 30 people in my current company only 1 is using the Macos. In the other companies that number was also 0-1-2 persons at max meaning less than 10% of people. I think the point is that the Mac based devices are way too expensive for East Europe, but its possibly more common in West Europe. You could buy possibly 1.5-3x better Windows/Linux device for the same price in Eastern europe.

[@jamescross]

Thanks for sharing your experience!

[@johto]

Yep, one solution is to stop being poor. Imho M1 Macbook Air is one of the best value proposition in a long time ! 👍

[@NerexisPL]

@@johto Yep Macbook Air is out of those Macbook products the best for entry level and value but, small and medium, or even big companies still wont invest into it in Eastern Europe because also the services/apps/ecosystem is possibly cheaper if you go with Microsoft. Also, what possibly worries me about Macbook Air is the RAM, a 16gb RAM is just a minimum for professional dev (junior will be fine with 8gb), but probably its the best to go with 24gb if you use a lot of VMs on on your machine or if you use tons of workspace apps. We are trying to be more rich but you know one ant in the office won't change the entire economy and geopolitics of the region, its more complicated than that. :D

[@gmalo2105]

As a Unix Admin for a global company, we used Mac's exclusively. Everything from Python & Bash scripting to interacting with our systems was so simple. Mac's just get out of your way. Now that I'm at an AWS shop, it's all PCs. 80% of my time though is spent in WSL2/Ubuntu where I've tried to recreate my old setup as much as I could.

[@user-fc9ms9nc8n]

Hi James I was looking in your channel, I wasn’t able to find any video having a tutorial or any kind of thing where you show stuff. Do you have a portfolio site or something where ai can check in some of your work.

[@wlcrutch]

Another thing to consider: hardware consistency. It’s such a mixed bag with pcs, even among similar specs. You know with a mac you are going to get a great trackpad, great (not best, but certainly excellent) screen, and adequate keyboard with minimal faff. pcs always feel like a crapshoot hardware wise

[@portman8909]

Trackpads are trash.

[@pythonantole9892]

The survey was global while your experience is local. I imagine in places like India there's a higher number of developers who use Windows either due to cost or simply because they work for small companies that dont have the budget to afford Macs.

[@SF-li9kh]

Then shouldn't Linux be more used due to the absence of licensing fees

[@marcoa.nostasmileta8238]

loving your videos!! i have a question, i want to self teach myself coding and machine learning. i'll have to squeeze the time since i have a 9-5. i'm on a 1200$ budget but want a Mac, wich one should you recommend me to buy? (i travel a lot)

[@jamescross]

Once you get serious in machine learning you will be doing most of that on dedicated servers not on your laptop. So, do what makes financial sense for you. I first learned on a cheap windows laptop that I used for a couple of years. Any of the current macs are way better than that one was. So, probably look at the m1 macbook air. if you can spring for 16GB great. If that's too much go for 8GB and don't stress. With 8GB you might have to be mindful to not have too many ram hungry apps open at the same time. I had to do that with the windows laptop. I just got used to closing photoshop when not using it and it worked just fine.

[@marcoa.nostasmileta8238]

@@jamescross thanks man!

[@planeetpaul]

I've always used pc at home and mac at work. I definitely prefer Windows without a doubt. I've never experienced Windows getting slow after a while, at least not with Windows 10. Maybe the Windows os needs a little more maintenance in order to keep it running smooth.

[@rcmag13]

Yea, I think the windows OS requires a little bit more knowledge but honestly it doesn't take that much time. I honestly feel like the Macbook is just a lazy way to not learn anything about how Operating Systems work in general, which if you are a developer, should be frowned upon anyway.

[@denncardoso]

Nice content! I have been working with MacBook Pro 13 inch 2020 since 2015 and I can't go back to windows for programming. However, this machine is from the company I am working for today. So, I am interested to buy a MacBook Air for myself to develop my projects and for study. If it possible, could you make a video review using MacBook Air giving you opinion as an engineer/developer? I want to know if an M1 MacBook Air is powerful enough to open big IDE, such as code and pycharm (I am a data engineer). Thank you and again, great work!

[@jamescross]

looks like you found my other video :) . If you are able to buy directly from apple, might be worth doing that to give it a try. They are pretty good about accepting returns if it doesn't meet your expectations.

[@SportsIncorporated]

After viewing a number of M2 MacBook Air videos on KZbin I would say you don't use the MacBook (Edit: Macbook Air) for software development. If you don't use an M2 I don't know why you would use an M1 for software development.

[@jamescross]

@STEPHAN FEIBISH Your comment is confusing. The M2 was announced June 6, 2022. This video was made Sept 1, 2021. So this video has nothing to do with M2. As for what I use, I have used a variety of macbooks the last 9 or so years. I don't own an M2 and don't have a compelling need to upgrade since my M1's do what I need, so that probably won't happen until I'm eligible to upgrade my work laptop in a couple of years. That said, feel free to believe whatever you want.

[@reynandelizo1480]

May I ask help right now it is ok to buy same specs of your mac laptop m1, 32gb and 1tb ssd there a lot of option m2 and m3 chip but it is more expensive.

[@maruthi04]

Really nice video 👍

[@jamescross]

thanks!

[@guims357]

Hey, what you think about use a M1max for data science/data analysis, Using, i dont know something like a parallels to use a Windows VM for excell and a linux VM for conteiners maybe?

[@jamescross]

should do a great job

[@guims357]

@@jamescross thanks for the answer

[@MuhammadArnaldo]

What about docker? don't we can use any system like variety of version in one device. will using mac still good? especially the M1, that said not compatible with some development environment.

[@Phantom-pu1xn]

My company gave me a MacBook pro m3. I thought having a MacBook will be the ultimate development machine. But, I ran into problems with Mac while trying to create and run a docker container containing a headless browser. And doing the same thing in WSL 2 worked fine. As a guy who develops for the web and simultaneously working on DevOps and backend. I prefer WSL 2, because everything in the cloud is Linux .

[@radisplayground]

The way you talk about development life and about how the OS-es work reminds me of newbies. Are you sure that you have that "huge" corporate experience?

[@jamescross]

feel free to search for me on linkedin

[@24kb72]

Planning to buy a macbook for freelance, school stuffs and basic programming.. just confused what macbook should I get. Should i go for Macbook air m1 and upgrade it with 16gb or should I go with pro m1 8gb? Thank you in advance.

[@jamescross]

if i had to choose between those i would probably lean toward air with 16gb ram. that’s an important upgrade for me. if you need video editing then i would save up for m1 pro with 16gb.

[@24kb72]

@@jamescross I will just save up for m1 pro for long term use as well. Thanks! Really appreciate it. 👌🏼 You deserve more subs!!!

[@ruzaroos]

Right now, the 13inch Pro is just a way to take more money from you. If you are still saving, keep saving for a 14". If that is too expensive, get the Air with 16GB. Nothing you do with the computer will be affected by that choice. Since the M1 launched, that 13" Pro has been nothing but a way to get more money out of people for no computational reason. Now that the 14" and 16" have been refreshed, I hope they just kill it so they can stop confusing young people. If they start giving an option to put an 8core M1 Pro in it, then that would actually be worth considering and justify the 13" Pro SKU.

[@tanyachisepo8016]

@@ruzaroos was thinking of buying the pro 13“ 8gb. Now, not so sure

[@marcospaulohonorato1301]

What camera do you use to record your videos?

[@jamescross]

sony a7siii. studio tour kzbin.info/www/bejne/oKjVoKing659qbc

[@shankarraj3433]

Nice work.

[@jamescross]

Thanks!

[@phenix7344]

Im using a ThinkPad t480 with Linux Ubuntu 22.04 i Just Love it. For me it Just works. And there ist Always the Option of a quick Windows VM.

[@ateawungpardwin3590]

I'm not a software engineer but planning to and you just madenmy choice of laptop easy. Thank you

[@TuongNguyen-cz8ko]

Can I use macbook pro 13 inch pro m1 for mobile app, bro?

[@mekhrangiz3560]

Hi Devs! I am a first-year student in MIS major and I am planning to shop for a laptop. I have two choices either hp envy x360 15 10th gen with 16ram and 512SSD or M1 MacBook air with 8GB ram and 512 SSD and the price is almost the same in my country mac is 150$ more. The field I want to work in is computer science and web development. If I go with Hp its screen quality is not that good but the mac I can afford has less ram. I watched your video about the MacBook air m1 for students but still, I am not really sure. Which one would you recommend? Your content is amazing!!!

[@jamescross]

i always regret going cheap on the ram and i learned on a windows. might check with your school. some are very windows focused and others it won’t matter as much. with a mac you can run a windows vm if needed. at this point in my career it’s mac all the way but if i was starting school i would say don’t overextend yourself financially. unfortunately i can’t make the decision for you. either will likely work fine for school.

[@im3sixty]

May want to hold off on that purchase, so many rumors about new apple products around the corner, with that said, if you like the current Air i would recommend looking for an open box type of deal, the value is usually great there although 16GB of RAM would not likely to be available in an open box scenario due to it considered a “custom build”.. maybe post apple product release you could find some deals on the current Air with 16GB 2nd hand. I find that most Mac users usually take care of their machines as one would take care of a luxury car ;)

[@mekhrangiz3560]

@@jamescross thank you

[@mekhrangiz3560]

@@im3sixty yeah that was my plan actually, cuz i was so interested in m1x and m2 but my computer science teacher started to give coding assignments so that is why I decided to go with air. Yeah actually second hand purchase is a good idea 😃 in my country mac air with 16 gb ram and 512 ssd is 1650$ which is so annoying and if i want to buy from apple store there is no delivery option for my country

[@cipopescu]

@@mekhrangiz3560 400$ ?! Expensive?! Macbook Air M1 16GB is a little over 1100 euros in Romania (which is NOT a great country income-wise)

[@MadTofan]

A lot of company in third world country like mine Malaysia and even big ones like India are mostly using windows just due to cost. We have to start with windows and stick with it because Macbook's price in our country are equivalent to multiple windows laptop so when the companies have to make a decision which one they would want their employee to work with, it would be the cheaper and more familiar machine. I have finally purchased Macbook Air M1 because the price just seems so good value wise and I am absolutely in love with it. Familiar terminal, best in class touchpad and ecosystem with other Apple product really draws me closer to it. Of course I had some hiccups earlier when Apple Silicon wasn't supported much (pre-native M1 brew days). But its getting better everyday!

[@jamescross]

good points!

[@farisyafadzil1569]

Salam and Hi! Fellow Malaysian here. Would you recommend others buying Mac Air M1 for daily programming device? Im been contemplating wether to stay on windows or switch to macos since you’re in the IT industry here? What would you suggest and what’s your experience after using for few months? Any major cons you?

[@MadTofan]

@@farisyafadzil1569 switching to mac is 1 thing, there are a lot of things in mac being done differently with windows. a simple example is the way mac handle application window management. another thing you have to consider is that M1 is an arm chip. It really depends on what is your development environment, as far as mine which mostly consist of Rust, Typescript and Python. These have great arm support. But I would not assume the same for C#. Getting enough RAM is also very crucial. I had complications during the purchase so I only had the opportunity to buy the 8GB version which caused a trouble for me to run my old Java microservices project which normally takes about 12GB of RAM when running all the containers. So far, as long as I am not bottlenecked by my RAM it has been a pleasant experience development wise. its fast enough for my work, screen is gorgeous, completely silent, it has excellent keyboard and amazing touch pad. Another point is probably gaming, if you even want to consider gaming on your development device, get a windows. I am fortunate enough to have a separate machine just to play my games.

[@mwwhited]

There are two types of developers... those that get work done and those that use macs.

[@vyqia]

What did u mean by those use macs?😅

[@sohrobby]

Not a single developer on our very large software development team in my company uses Windows. It's Mac all the way except for two who use Ubuntu Linux.

[@npcwrld]

I need your advice I'm a beginner who wants to become a developer I don't know what to buy between a MacBook or a Gaming laptop obviously MacBook is too expensive but I have two choices I can buy a new gaming laptop or buy a second hand MacBook. What do you think I should do?

[@jamescross]

Do you already have a laptop you can use to learn on and then upgrade when you know what you want to do? I first learned on a cheap windows laptop and it worked out. You mention gaming. That probably won't be as fun on a mac. I know plenty of software engineers who use a company provided macbook for work but chose a windows laptop for personal stuff because they also game. I'm not a gamer so that doesn't affect me. Just some thoughts.

[@npcwrld]

@@jamescross no I don't have a laptop and I'm not buying it for gaming I have no interest in gaming I just want it for work but i said gaming laptop because I think they're good for programming

[@npcwrld]

@@jamescross also I don't wanna buy a laptop just to learn I wanna use it for a long time so i can make money from it then i can upgrade it

[@jamescross]

While I personally like macbooks, they do carry a high premium for ram and other upgrades. Some people don't mind buying used laptops, but that's not me unless I knew who I was buying it from and could trust them to describe the usage accurately. If buying for myself in that scenario I would probably lean toward a new windows laptop unless I was intending to build ios apps. But you gotta be the one to decide what makes financially for you and what will be suited to your area of interests. My use cases could be totally different than yours. Best wishes with the decision.

[@ALCLA3000]

I’m prefer ultrabook(including macbook air) if you don’t playing AAA gaming. Other choice except MBA M1 I’m suggesting Thinkpad T series because you can CTO for fit your budget and easily to upgrade in later more than MBA M1 or buy second hand and upgrading by yourself. MBA M1 or M2 if you need to use more long term you need much more CTO budget for future proof guarantee like ram or ssd.

[@garrettgr]

not really a developer… but i’m a student and i work mostly in op sec and pen testing where it is mostly linux based, but i’m dual booting black arch from my 2019 macbook pro and i write almost all my programs and do my regular cs work in mac os using jetbrains and vs code 🤷‍♂️

[@jamescross]

thanks for sharing your experience!

[@mathewsjoy8464]

I feel like it always depends what you class a a “developer” e.g a c++ developers windows is simply so much better, a lot of software is just simply better or only accessable on windows, also with WSL2 I feel like windows is getting much better for dev work

[@jamescross]

good points!

[@richrollin4867]

Visual Studio for Windows - the gold standard for software development.

[@blvnktek]

gotta say though, vs code makes c++ development so much easier. I think when you use the console "a lot" MacBooks are the way to go. It's reeeeeallllly close to the way linux works without having to do linux.

[@TheClinchMagazine]

The only compelling reason to buy Mac is that Apple doesn't allow other hardware to build iOS and MacOS apps.

[@abzoluut4084]

I don't think it's off. I haven't checked anything, but I assume you're from NA. I think MacOS is preferred there because of how well it works. They're also quite expensive. I think this is the reason why in other countries Windows is on top: it's just easier to get your hands on.

[@DarmaniLink]

Windows + WSL does everything a mac does and gets you better hardware for the price

[@the.dorgas]

Bugs, yes, but slowdown in Windows to me never occur in 5+ years, probably because I started using SSD. One of, if not the most culprit of a system slowdown in Windows is the amount of programs starting with the OS, just remove everything unnecessary. I've used macos for couple of days(in hackintosh). I did not enjoy the OS overall (windows manipulation, close app doest not close, some other things), but the two things that you mention it in your video that is the best features overall about mac is stability and that you can develop everything (because Apple does not permit you develop MacOS, iOS, without a mac). I as a game developer, cannot use MacOS even if I wanted, because graphics card on mac are outclassed by most mid tear video cards and the incompatibility using Unreal Engine in Apple Silicon. But if you use Unity and have not a complex game, using Mac is fine.

[@jamescross]

great points. thanks for sharing.

[@saint_snow]

Outside of coding, I just find that macs are great for travel and especially the new ipads. Well designed and work well, always had them for laptops and now tablets. However I strictly use windows at home on my pc. I just like it better and it can do everything, not just strictly workflow.

[@mukishs538]

I have a basic lenovo laptop with 4GB RAM, 512GB Hard drive and AMD processor. I would like to purchase a new laptop. Because I am AI and ML student. I have two ideas either to purchase a windows machine or to purchase M1 Mac book air. I'm a Indian and in India apple offers 10% offer for college students 😁. What will you guys recommend me to purchase? Either MacBook Air or a Windows machine? I have to work on ML, DL and neural networks too. So, suggest accordingly🤗

[@jamescross]

since you already have a laptop maybe open it up and see if the ram is removable and upgrade it. here is a video on my laptop suggestions geared more toward cs students on this topic: kzbin.info/www/bejne/o2WVfoWrpNtrh5o

[@mukishs538]

@@jamescross 👍🏻

[@Lync512]

I have a Linux tower and a Mac laptop (that I need to upgrade. I never expected I’d like it so I didn’t configure how I wanted. But I actually really like macOS with the M series apple silicon. ) I personally like this setup. I at all times have a system with a full Unix terminal. I refuse to buy or build a windows system. And I get it free from my university. So I’ll stick to my linux and macOS setup mix which covers all my bases. For an internship (and subsequent banging my head over Java) used a windows laptop and would have preferred a Mac or Linux machine. Windows was an absolute nightmare to get working with everything.

[@jamescross]

thanks for sharing your experience Lync!

[@0runny]

Not everyone uses a laptop. As a freelance software developer of +30 year in the industry I'm 100% based at home in my office. I don't use a laptop - I used to use a Linux desktop - For the last 4 years I've used an iMac Pro (great machine) - I'm thinking of going back to a Linux based desktop whilst using the apple eco system via web apps on Linus - essentially for more bangs for my buck - any thoughts?

[@jamescross]

Really comes down to your interests and needs. I might opt for a desktop if I were more stationary or full remote. I have not tried the Linus approach, so the experience may be different. I have tried out other web based and app based tools on an ipad (not apples to apples) and felt very limited to what they chose to support and offer. Hopefully the Linus approach will be much more open with it not being tied to a tablet. If you go down that route, let me know how it goes. Best wishes.

[@dobbins5943]

I recently made the switch to M1 macbook Air and I am so happy i did. It seems like everything I do takes "less steps". My main reason was because tutorials and udemy courses, the instructor is typically on a mac. They would explain how to do something, and then be like " if ur on windows do a google search on how to make this work on a windows computer". Would completely take the wind out of my sales as now I would have to do work and research so I can DO my work and research lol. In a way Im kinda glad I started out on Windows because now I really appreciate the leg ups I get using a Mac. And yes, being an Iphone guy the eco system makes it even better!

[@jamescross]

totally agree. i remember experiencing the same friction. it’s doable on windows but more efficient and smooth on the mac. thanks for sharing!

[@QZ1879]

i prefer linux everytime, but when it comes to ms office and light editing, linux is nightmare. i have thougt to switch on mac, but mac is expensive considering budget to performance ratio. so i just run a windows VM inside a linux for light editing and ms office job.

[@xmaverickhunterkx]

Unfortunately, dev related or not, many companies choose Windows for 2 reasons: 1. Cost. 2. Maybe more important than 1, many IT departments make these decisions, and non dev IT people are generally more Windows inclined for historical reasons. Interestingly, I read long time ago IBM started using Macs and published some results saying people using Macs were more productive because their computers worked better (less down time) and needed less maintenance and IT support hehe :)

[@mtwata]

I use Linux but tbh anything would do. We got to a point where even Windows is decent to work with, so it became mostly about people trying to belong to a group lol

[@MegaSpiderpunk]

I think the decision comes down to - do you want games or no games?

[@thydevdom]

I enjoy both. Because I have a lowend MacBook Pro I only use it on the go or when I’m out of town. Other than that, I’m using Debian based Linux on desktop.

[@rano12321]

I don't think personally the title is quite accurate. It depends. Most people in western countries are using apple products in general, but in eastern Europe, Asia and South America MacBooks aren't popular. It also depends on the type of developer you are, since the low entry to barier and the popularity of web development, it might seem like all the developers are web developers and they are all using MacBooks. But there are other types of developers as well, like game developers and computer graphics developers, ML developers. And almost every graphics and game developers use windows PC and Nvidia annihilates MacBooks when it comes to ML and AI. Also a side note on you mentioning xcode, it is the worst IDE to work on big projects. A better title for this video would be: Why most web developers in America prefer MacBooks. 😆😆

[@constantfear]

In the UK I find most large companies locked into windows. Thankfully WSL has made coding super easy compared to a few years ago. That said my next gig will be a MacBook shop looking forward to it.

[@jamescross]

interesting. thanks for sharing your experience in the UK.

[@tamilshoutcom]

Quite simple cos of command line and server setups. Even with Ubuntu on Windows these days, it is still not the same. To date, running docker and docker compose files still causes issues on windows. On a mac or linux, it just simply works. It gets so annoying I typically opt for virtual machines + ubuntu instead of having to deal with Window's nonsense. And when it comes to servers you could just setup your machine to hold certain configs or secrets in parts like opt/secrets to match how it is set up on the server end to just match path. Makes it easier to run things locally. Again not as easy when it comes to Windows. No hate on Windows. It's my primary machine for gaming and other stuff like emails. But it simply not worth the time it takes to try and perform dev work on it. You won't see it in the short run with personal projects. But you absolutely will with large projects and open source projects.

[@jamescross]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

[@anonymous-xp9tm]

this is my personal opinion, because apple/mac stuff are made mostly in America (correct me if i'm wrong) they are very expensive outside the country, for example the asia, this is why most developers in asia prefer windows because normal people will tend to buy cheap stuffs which is android/windows in those countries.

[@koutschrono7770]

Preferring Mac over pc and windows is an American thing in Europe most developer's use pc's. .

[@slob5041]

My company makes me use windows so using OS X after work is a breath of fresh air.

[@JonathanBigbarkBarclay]

I just got rid of my Surface Pro 2012 and it ran great and I got a lot of time out of it just like a MacBook but the touchscreen started to go. I've had better experience with the surface than anything else I've used in the past.

[@jamescross]

interesting. i've never tried a surface pro.

[@master3000hd]

I work on a company that uses windows I use c# and .net etc. For personal use I prefer Mac.

[@JonathanBigbarkBarclay]

Love windows but I'm still learning code but I did graphic design and used mac's in the past and still to this day hate MacBooks.

[@jamescross]

They're not for everyone, but there's nothing wrong with that. Best to use what you enjoy.

[@sjatkins]

Many software devs prefer linux and would choose it if their employer offered it. A linux dev system is a lot more compatible with what will really run in production.

[@gorilla-san]

In Europe, devs use Linux. The more barebones the bigger a chad they are

[@ismailco]

I use Linux as my main system, and if I had to choose between Windows or MacOS, I will always choose MacOS. I use windows in Virtual machine (KVM) only for gaming and some apps that are not in Linux

[@alisinakarimi5608]

This channel deserves a million subscribers at least !!! I'm very sad 😞😞 folks should follow you more ! The content is absolutely fascinating.

[@jamescross]

thanks! but until then, having a small channel is nice because it’s easier to chat with people. have a great day!

[@DmytroIgonkin]

Actually preffer windows, you could customize it as you want. As a bonus you could run a game on your free time. I haven't any issues with Windows for a years so have no idea why to pay more.

[@jamescross]

games are definitely better on windows.

[@RichardHorpe]

why do you need to pay? most decent tech companies hand out free macs like candy.

[@jamescross]

@@RichardHorpe in my case, i 100% keep my personal device use separate from company devices. so i buy my own.

[@DmytroIgonkin]

@@RichardHorpe it is still about a money. I have a choice in my company and I prefer windows laptop with the same price.

[@Edmundostudios]

I haven’t had to reinstall windows very often but I have had issues with Bluetooth before. I work in QA and I find using Mac allows me to test Apple devices much more easily using Xcode where as on windows I could only use android studio, also having sketch is handy for looking at design files. I’m learning more about selenium and automation which so far has been nice to use in Mac terminal. I think I will probably just use my windows machines now for entertainment.

[@jamescross]

thanks for sharing your perspective!

[@aranzazubravo7011]

FACTS all the bros will tell me windows is better but i love how smooth stable and yummy the mac experience is

[@RockTheCage55]

Unfortunately where I live is a pretty much only Microsoft area (because of enterprise management). I would prefer a Mac but I’m not given a choice. I would choose linux next but I’m forced on windows (which I hate). I’m a full stack developer & use .Net on backend

[@lucajacovig8159]

im gonna get soon my first macbook

[@nathangothan601]

There are a multitude of people in the world making 6 figure incomes using Windows. Microsoft is leading the industry in open source tech (VScode, for example) as well. Apple is great for simplicity, being UX based, as well as video/photo editing. The new M1 (and even newer M2 chips) are great for those applications. Windows machines are better for a wider breadth of uses, including gaming, upgrading older tech, etc. it takes about 1 minute to install chrome and VScode. You can just as easily VM Linux Ubuntu/Xubuntu as well. So if you are literally only using your computer for coding, maybe some general web browsing, or to create content then go Mac. If you are a gamer, enjoy open source tech, enjoy tinkering more and are overall more techy then go Windows.

[@random6033]

Probably depends on what you do or on the company you work for, from what I know Google used gLinux for workstations for example

[@jamescross]

totally true

[@urluelhurl]

OS preference is dependent on usage and application based on the user needs. MacOS and Linux base distros have some similarities due to being Unix based, and I personally run windows with Linux based kernels on HyperV. The issue with Apple is their greed as they use proprietary features on just about everything while charging a premium for it. No one uses Apple servers or networking hardware/software as it's not compatible with anything else. While MacOS might have a few benefits for coding, I don't feel like I'm missing out by using a different OS. Linux distros has meet all my needs when I find Windows lacking. Edit: Apple machines doesn't meet my need as I spend most of my time on pytorch, tensorflow and jax which requires a large amount of resoruces. Apple does not provide customization, performance and ease of repair to the same degree of a P920 or other highend workstations. HECK the new Mac Pro does even support dedicated GPUs while my P920 can support 3 m6000 and 2TB of ram.

[@jamescross]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts

[@stevemcclure2879]

Great video and info. I chose a Mac for all the reasons you outlined. I love that I can do any OS on my Mac!

[@jamescross]

Glad it was helpful!

[@yogendrasinh]

I have spent about 20+ years as software engineer working on Windows, Linux and Mac. I prefer Windows as far as possible. Linux is my second choice but 1st choice for C++ development.

[@tedfitzpatrickyt]

.net (and some php) devs use windows, all other devs use mac - nearly all web devs use mac

[@Kaiju3301]

Just about everyone I’ve seen using a windows machine professionally was using it to run Linux.

[@rcmag13]

I have never had to deal with any of these issues on windows. If you know what you are doing, you won't have a lot of the issues described here. For me its pretty cut and dry, linux and windows over mac any day. With that said, I can see the appeal of a mac for someone like a web developer. However, I write code in C++, python, Java etc and I need to understand how the OS works. If you are strictly front end you can probably get away with being clueless about the OS. I also actually prefer desktops over laptops though so I can run 4+ monitors for hyper-productivity and I can upgrade the hardware as needed. but that's a different conversation entirely. My thoughts are: macbook: You just want to jump in and code and don't want to learn much about anything else and don't care about customization whatsoever and pay out the nose for it. windows: You want some customizability and the option to upgrade things or get different memory, video, processor combinations to suit your specific needs. linux: You want full customizability from an OS perspective.

[@jamescross]

thanks for sharing your perspective!

[@ALCLA3000]

I’m ok with both OS, For windows machine stability it depend what hardware do you buy. In my experience if you want windows more stable and don’t need headache with a ton of research before buying and many problem you should buy high end commercial pc but all of them are expensive like mac and some of model only sell for corporate not for home customer. For example thinkpad and latitude in my country is hardly to buy when compare with consumer pc and mac.

[@milkyway5573]

Tbh i prefer linux both as a daily driver and as a dev machine The only reason i dual boot windows is cuz of one game and thats it, if i didnt have to play that game i would have deleted windows from my PC and never install it

[@geisonmcd]

I've used mid range Linux laptops for the past 10 years and my new company just gave me a MBP M1 16" 2021 which I've been using for 3 months and honestly I'm disappointed because this really feels like just a non-buggy version of Ubuntu with a somewhat different window manager, which is better sure, but for all the praise I was hearing and the gigantic price I thought this would be so much better, but no it's really similar to Ubuntu (because it's unix and because Ubuntu probably coppied a lot of stuff from the Mac). Like when I went from Windows to Linux It took me years to learn how to do basic stuff, but on the Mac I was productive from the second day on. The hardware is the best hardware I've seen in my life thought, the screen is beautiful, the touchpad is so much better than any other laptops I've used, the webcam is better than most mid range webcams you can buy online, the mic and speakers are top notch. It's much better than whatever you can find in Linux Laptops, but in Brazil a solid windows laptop goes for 7k BRL while the MBP starting price is 18k BRL.

[@jamescross]

thanks for sharing your thoughts. it's true they are expensive.

[@bj0urne]

Windows still takes the lead I believe, I mean macOS is barely scratching 15% and you're telling me that the majority of software developers are inside of that 15%?

[@abhinay4200]

Most devs don't have the choice of their OS.

[@jamescross]

Which OS do you prefer?

[@abhinay4200]

Windows or Linux

[@erfelipe]

macOS is a great OS and for me, I expected never come back to windows. macOS or Linux.

[@CO8848_2]

You are pretty off. Developers prefer macs because macOS is a unix variant, therefore all the environment is essentially compatible with most of the open software, and the tooling.

[@tennisfreak312]

Use whichever fits your workflow nicely and gets the job done efficiently and fits your wallet. At the end of the day, it's a tool that helps you do your work. Would love to return to Apple world, but if I do that I might need to change my other accessories into Apple as well, e.g. iPhone, iPad, iCloud.

[@jamescross]

yeah. switching over can be a big commitment to get the most from the ecosystem.

[@GabrielAlfaroCossio]

Linux is just better, I agree, Apple hardware is the best on the market right now, and macOS is secure, but just for privacy concerns I rather use Linux and run something like sosumi, or any other VM that allows passthrough.

[@jamescross]

thanks for sharing

[@Mokera52]

A little late to the party but a lot of government jobs use windows exclusively and then you also have Microsoft themselves.

[@jamescross]

very true

[@berenTM]

Game developers still mostrly need windows PC.

[@cianmoriarty7345]

Web dev isn't the entire developer landscape is why.

[@SchoolofAI]

Thought: Rich developers have Apple products everyone else uses Windows. Source: I use Windows

I use Arc ... BTW

[@thejezzi5219]

I can't imagine using osx for software development. I mean it's still bsd under the hood so why not use linux instead where you have full control and better performance and more security and no data collection whatsoever. Who in the right mind chooses osx over linux? I mean yeah I get why people use windows. First of all because of games and the overall coercion to use windows (in most countries), but no one forces you to have money and use a macbook.

[@freddvincent]

Good but what happen if you are C# developer

[@jamescross]

then i would use windows

[@mrmuffin5046]

No macs on my end. All companies used windows. I definetly don’t believe you saying a high end pc would need to be reset every couple of months that’s just simply not true. High end pcs these days lasts 5plus years

[@jamescross]

Thanks for sharing your perspective

[@user-fc9ms9nc8n]

On top of that the new reset functionality works like a charm in windows 11 in mere minutes completely fresh windows install.

[@tanko.reactions176]

the problem with this survey is that a great majority of the "software dev" people consist of javascript or html "engineers" - basically, not really devs. if you account for that, you will have true statistics!

[@jamescross]

unfortunately there are not a lot of surveys that widely cover topics or even location for that matter. thanks for your thoughts.

[@bw7868]

All comparison is just Windows vs Mac, of course windows will fail. But let's compare Mac to Linux?? Linux could not fail except if you develop software targeting Apple products. So if you don't target Apple, I don't see any point pay 2x or 3x for a machine you could have the same performance or even better with Linux. I think if companies will offer Linux beside Windows and Apple most engineers will choose Linux. As freelancer developer and I've to choose between the 3 options, my main machine in Linux, and another old MacBook, only used to compile software targeting Apple products.

[@KangoV]

Nearly every one of our devs hate MacOS. The memory management is just crap. Running loads of backend services (Kubernetes with loads of containers) plus all the business apps it maxes out at 32GB. On Linus, the sme apps use 17GB. WTF!?! IntelliJ just crashes all the time and runs out of memory. Linus is just soooooo much more responsive.

[@jamescross]

Thanks for sharing your perspective!

[@KangoV]

@@jamescross My company gave us the choice, Mac or Windows. I had to go with Mac :( I really love the Mac hardware though, but MacOS just sucks armadillo balls!

[@Evilanious]

At my current company windows is the standard with some linux sprinkled in where it's convenient. Nobody has a mac. Mac isn't an option. I've heard nobody who really wants one. The preferences of you and your coworkers may more parochial than you imagine.

[@awunderl]

Developers? Is there only one kind of developer or software engineer? I know the answer.

[@im3sixty]

Windows for games and MacOS for everything else :) Cool video!

[@jamescross]

thanks

[@coxxycabee]

Tax benefits. If you can claim, why not claim the most expensive option? If it's good then use it. If it's shit then sell it for a profit and buy something you'lll like more for a cheaper price. Can't believe this is being questioned.

[@HikingFeral]

I'll make it a point to never use a single Apple product all the way through my Diploma, hopefully then Linux/Windows gets some more love. Apple users are the Vegans of I.T