Should I buy an American, Japanese or German car?

Guess what. They're all made of the same parts and they all get you from here to there.

Android or iPhone? Mac or PC? In my experience, if you have to think about the operating system, you're on the wrong operating system.

> Posted by: Terje "Apple is for geeks, and I am assure you that the reason Mac sales are up is because uber-geeks are buying them in droves. For geeks, Apple is the bomb right now."

+1

Attend any Hackathon and count the number of MacBook Pros vs Windows laptops. The geeks have voted with their wallets. Of course it helps that my MacBook Pro gets 8 hours on a single battery charge while my Lenovo laptop only got 2 hours!

Microsoft has ported their Visual Studio development tools to OS X. Why would they bother to do that if Mac's weren't taking the development community by storm?

> Posted by: deusx "Is this some alternate reality you just came from?"

No, you're both right because you are talking about two different user bases here:

Deusx is correct that for application users, Macs are for people who don't want to know about the technology, they just want to use the tool and PC's are for geeks who love being a system administrator and tweaking their systems.

Terje is correct that for developers, Mac's are for geeks. There are currently 1.5 million apps in the iOS App Store. That means there are at least 1,500,000 development shops using Macs. Also there is a major shift in the I/T industry to Cloud Computing. The majority of cloud compute nodes are running Linux (a Unix derivative). Windows includes zero tools for using Linux and even with adding open source tools like cygwin, there are complications because it behaves close but not quite the same which causes problems. The Mac is Unix based and includes all the tools needed for developing for, and managing cloud computers running Unix. Need to ssh to a remote computer? It's already install on OS X. Want to write Python code? It's already install on OS X. Want to write Perl code? It's already install on OS X. Want to write Ruby code? It's already included in OS X. Windows has no major programming languages included and doesn't even have a secured shell (ssh) client. This makes OS X the desktop platform of choice for developers writing cloud native applications. Right out-of-the-box it's ready to develop. Oh, and Apple's development tool Xcode is free. Microsoft's development tool Visual Studio Professional cost $1,199.00.

It's important to point out that while in the Application world Apple is the "evil empire" trying to lock you in to their platform... in the Development world, Microsoft is the "evil empire" trying to lock you in to their proprietary development platform that only works with their OS technology. Completely the reverse. This point is very important for Vegas Pro because Sony bought into Microsoft's proprietary technology which is why they couldn't make it cross-platform like Adobe and Avid did with their applications.

Major corporations like IBM are switching their desktops from Windows to Mac. IBM plans to purchase up to 200,000 Macs, with 50-75% of employees ultimately switching from Lenovo. There is a waiting list of IBM employees who would rather have a Mac than another Windows computer when they are due an upgrade. So they are offered a new Windows computer "now", or get on a waiting list for a Mac, and they choose the waiting list! You can read about IBM's plans by following this link and watch a video by their CIO Jeff Smith:

New video outlines IBM’s plan to switch from Windows to Mac

Like I said, attend any Hackathon, and you'll be amazed at how may geeks bring their MacBook Pros. An overwhelming number of tutorials on development technologies like Docker, Node.js, Ruby on Rails, Git, etc. are for the Mac and not Windows. But this is the development community, not end-users. I would venture to guess that most Mac end-users have never opened a Terminal window while developers like myself live in a bash shell all day long.

The times they are a changin' ;-)

~jr

yep. times have been a changin' for going on 30 years now.... ... still at 5%. hmmmmm.

Just two points to make as I hate posting in these types of threads as they never end well lol. But regarding this:

"There are currently 1.5 million apps in the iOS App Store. That means there are at least 1,500,000 development shops using Macs."

Naturally the number of dev shops is far less because its not 1 app per dev shop, most have multiple apps on there.

Regarding times changing I can tell y'all this with my google analytics numbers. I own and run multiple websites for about a decade that get many millions of hits per year so I've been able to track progress on os usage, etc because of this. Linux which has been claimed to take over the world has never changed usage percentage, it's still right around 1.1% of my userbase. Mac OSX which also has been claimed is getting more popular, has also barely changed. It's gone from about 5.x% years ago to about 7.1% today. I believe people think OSX is gaining traction because they see Macbooks in lots of movies, tv shows, etc from paid product placement. But I'll tell you that my analytics info says otherwise, OSX is still very much a niche product.

@~jr

While I don't fundamentally disagree with anything you said, the deal between Apple and IBM is likely more nuanced.

"[I]IBM plans to purchase up to 200,000 Macs, with 50-75% of employees ultimately switching from Lenovo.[/I]"

This is part of a larger deal where IBM has deep vertical knowledge of industries and a large marketing force while Apple has the portable device and user interface . A significant portion of IBM employees are marketing reps and consultants who probably don't care much about the workstation that the company provides or might use or have used a Mac anyway. Many of the rest of the employee base may not care much either because the application(s) they use to do their jobs is more important to them than the hardware or O/S.

Such quid pro quo deals are common. Remember that Apple used the IBM PowerPC, a RISC-based processor, until the 2006 shift to Intel.

Full Disclosure:
I own IBM stock.
Many of the funds in which I invest have positions in Apple.

@ Steve Grisetti,

I like your analogy regarding "they all get you from there to there."

I'm curious are you as unconcerned about the food you eat? As just about anything will get you from today to tomorrow using the same logic.

Perhaps people do have preferences and perhaps they are important. Variety is the spice of life. Don't be so quick to discount it.

>>>There are currently 1.5 million apps in the iOS App Store. That means there are at least 1,500,000 development shops using Macs<<<

Not even close. There are "developers" who have hundreds of apps on that store. They just release junk after junk hoping for a hit ( Android is even worse ) , then you have kids who mostly develop on PCs and send it over to somebody with a Mac to bypass the "have to have a mac to upload to Apple store" thing.

Anyway, I wasn't talking about posers, hackers and whatever else. Serious development, movie CGI and games is almost all PC. Not talking about mobile games which are trash anybody can produce in about a week ( even those most of it is PC ).

By the way most of those app development shops you speak of are just a clueless guy in a basement. For every guy who makes a million with some app, there are million others who will never make enough to buy a hamburger. China and India alone probably have over 100 000 "developers" who steal other developers' apps and reupload them as theirs with a few minor changes. That is as far as their development goes.

It's not a pretty picture.

As Pete above, my own stats based on about 20 000 visitors per day show almost nobody using Macs ( 5% )

Anyway, I'm not saying you couldn't do all these things on a Mac, I'm just questioning why one would. You can buy better machines for less on the PC side and Most 3D programs + many other are native only to Windows, so why bother?

And if you have money to burn here: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Schenker-XMG-U726-Clevo-P870DM-Notebook-Review.153136.0.html.

You can edit and finish rendering before the Apple guy even loads his clips into FCP on his macbook

You can find stuff Apple won't have until 2020.

...and the children keep bickering.

Sorry, Hulk. Sure didn't mean to discount the value of variety -- or competition for the matter! ;)

I just think too much is made of mine-is-all-right-and-yours-is-all wrong. I've seen people get into near fist fights over which is a better brand of beer.

Macs are great! I own one myself. PCs are great. I own two. And I think Windows 10 is a big leap forward.

But, as I said, if I'm thinking too much about what operating system I'm on, I'm using the wrong operating system, IMO.

I need a break. Last night I had a dream in which Keanu Reeves got into my face with some moronic laugh and kept repeating how macs were what artists used and other mac cliches. I just keep telling him to back off. I'm not making this up, that's is what I remember from the whole thing. Why Keanu? No clue?