At my workplace all the devs are on either Mac OS or Linux, with Mac OS being more common among Web/PHP guys and Linux among the backend devs (like me). As it turns out, given the choice, nobody actually prefers Windows. I’m still baffled by Mac OS being so common, though, at least among devs.
This works because our whole IT infrastructure is designed to be accessible via the web-browser, most of it even without VPN, via two-factor authenticated single-sign-on, most of it self-hosted (all except Teams, which obviously also needs its own authentication). This gives people the freedom to run whatever OS they like on their computers and set it up themselves, with the only requirement being to use FDE with a strong password and regularly do backups to the remote storage. We’re also allowed (if not encouraged) to use the laptops for private stuff and get to keep them when they’re replaced.
And as far as I can tell IT problems because of this diverse environment are surprisingly minimal and mostly with those aforementioned web services.
The battery life on my MacBook M1 Max is better than the machine it replaced but nothing to write home about. I bought my wife an M4 MacBook Air and honestly she will misplace her charging cord for days because she didn’t need it. It’s remarkable. For most devs, a powerful Linux desktop (or cloud server) and a MacBook Air is a very powerful combination.
At my workplace all the devs are on either Mac OS or Linux, with Mac OS being more common among Web/PHP guys and Linux among the backend devs (like me). As it turns out, given the choice, nobody actually prefers Windows. I’m still baffled by Mac OS being so common, though, at least among devs.
This works because our whole IT infrastructure is designed to be accessible via the web-browser, most of it even without VPN, via two-factor authenticated single-sign-on, most of it self-hosted (all except Teams, which obviously also needs its own authentication). This gives people the freedom to run whatever OS they like on their computers and set it up themselves, with the only requirement being to use FDE with a strong password and regularly do backups to the remote storage. We’re also allowed (if not encouraged) to use the laptops for private stuff and get to keep them when they’re replaced.
And as far as I can tell IT problems because of this diverse environment are surprisingly minimal and mostly with those aforementioned web services.
To be fair to macOS, it’s still Unix-based, which at least makes it less miserable for development than Windows.
I would still go for Linux any time, though.
That and i hear macbook battery life is absolute black magic fuckery
The battery life on my MacBook M1 Max is better than the machine it replaced but nothing to write home about. I bought my wife an M4 MacBook Air and honestly she will misplace her charging cord for days because she didn’t need it. It’s remarkable. For most devs, a powerful Linux desktop (or cloud server) and a MacBook Air is a very powerful combination.