Why does it seem like most Web Devs use Macs?

[Ryokeen]

Hey Gang,
 

I'm being mentored and pruned to become a Front-End Dev for a start-up that's going well out of Cali. My, would be boss is using a Mac and he's constantly making small comments about how "using Windows for development is silly." That's not the first time I've heard a Web Developer say that. Most of the Web Dev. focused podcasts I listen to are hosted by folks who use Apple products.

I get that there certainly are several Mac-focused software packages that help with the process, but I'm sure Windows/Linux has them too.

Or, I would think that, that is true - but is it?

But I want to know who decided developing with Windows (or Linux) was a bad thing and why do seemingly so many Web Devs use Mac? Is it just because design schools use them so much?
 

Any thoughts?
 

Also if anyone has any tool recommendations for improving workflow and productivity on the Windows/Linux side, let a guy know.

[Enderman]

Just because someone knows how to code doesnt mean they are intelligent

[C0LL0SS0S]

Could imagine that they prefer macbooks because the industrial design and build Quality, also I still think that Apple makes every Company look like they know what they are doing for People who don't

[Ryokeen]

2 minutes ago, Enderman said:

Just because someone knows how to code doesnt mean they are intelligent

 

I don't think intelligence is the issue...
Sure, you're over-paying for hardware and software, but there has to be compelling reasons for doing so.

 

 

3 minutes ago, C0LL0SS0S said:

Could imagine that they prefer macbooks because the industrial design and build Quality, also I still think that Apple makes every Company look like they know what they are doing for People who don't

The design would be a draw, if you were trying to sell your services to non-techy people who "don't get computes." Mac products do look more sleek than the average Workbench/Editing Bench but the company I might work for is supported remotely, so that's not the issue either.

In this case, anyway.

[minibois]

I have NEVER heard a web dev say they prefer OSX over Windows for development. I rather always hear the opposite.

[AlTech]

7 minutes ago, C0LL0SS0S said:

Could imagine that they prefer macbooks because the industrial design and build Quality, also I still think that Apple makes every Company look like they know what they are doing for People who don't

yeah. People who use macs can look like they know something about what they're doing but they might no nothing.

 

2 minutes ago, Minibois said:

I have NEVER heard a web dev say they prefer OSX over Windows for development. I rather always hear the opposite.

YouTube comment section says otherwise. Everyone and their mother supposedly uses Macs for programming things which aren't games.

[Dredgy]

For actual web development (code) it doesn't really matter. Both are interchangeable and there's software on both platforms that are exceptionally good.

 

For design, particularly if photos or illustrations are involved, most Macs and MacBooks include a very, very good screen and great content scaling for high DPI screens. Industrial design can also be very important if clients actually see your development studio before signing a contract, but that is irrelevant to the software.

 

But web development is such a lightweight task and usually doesn't involve perfect colour accuracy like print does - any platform is fine for it.

 

For professional video development and photo work there are very cases to be made for using a Mac (my high end cinema camera's best codecs simply aren't available on Windows).

 

For web dev though, nah.

[Ryokeen]

3 minutes ago, Dredgy said:

 

 

For professional video development and photo work there are very cases to be made for using a Mac (my high end cinema camera's best codecs simply aren't available on Windows).

 

 

My bride is a hobbyist turned part-time photographer and when we upgrade our PC, I want to make sure that she has the best foot-forward she can and that our rig will support it. 

Should I really be considering a Mac Pro for her sake, or will a high-res, high quality, high accuracy monitor take care of most of her potential issues? She CAN do great video work (but she doesn't and doesn't plan to - no idea why.)
 

[VTF5252]

3 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

YouTube comment section says otherwise. Everyone and their mother supposedly uses Macs for programming things which aren't games.

Your problem is you are taking youtube comments seriously.

[AlTech]

9 hours ago, Ryokeen said:

 

I don't think intelligence is the issue...
Sure, you're over-paying for hardware and software, but there has to be compelling reasons for doing so.

 

 

The design would be a draw, if you were trying to sell your services to non-techy people who "don't get computes." Mac products do look more sleek than the average Workbench/Editing Bench but the company I might work for is supported remotely, so that's not the issue either.

In this case, anyway.

I agree, intelligence isn't the issue. It's lack thereof.

 

IDK about you but Macs in a business to me means "you're not doing real work here" vs PCs in a business "These guys mean business, they don't mess around".

 

Even apple at the iPad Pro event claimed Microsoft was the king of productivity. And they weren't lying.

 

9 hours ago, Dredgy said:

For actual web development (code) it doesn't really matter. Both are interchangeable and there's software on both platforms that are exceptionally good.

 

For design, particularly if photos or illustrations are involved, most Macs and MacBooks include a very, very good screen and great content scaling for high DPI screens.

 

But web development is such a lightweight task and usually doesn't involve perfect colour accuracy like print does - any platform is fine for it.

 

For professional video development and photo work there are very cases to be made for using a Mac (my high end cinema camera's best codecs simply aren't available on Windows).

 

For web dev though, nah.

Even for any kind of developing, PC is better. Only thing you need a mac for is art and graphics. Nothing else.

 

9 hours ago, Ryokeen said:

Hey Gang,
 

I'm being mentored and pruned to become a Front-End Dev for a start-up that's going well out of Cali. My, would be boss is using a Mac and he's constantly making small comments about how "using Windows for development is silly." That's not the first time I've heard a Web Developer say that. Most of the Web Dev. focused podcasts I listen to are hosted by folks who use Apple products.

I get that there certainly are several Mac-focused software packages that help with the process, but I'm sure Windows/Linux has them too.

Or, I would think that, that is true - but is it?

But I want to know who decided developing with Windows (or Linux) was a bad thing and why do seemingly so many Web Devs use Mac? Is it just because design schools use them so much?
 

Any thoughts?
 

Also if anyone has any tool recommendations for improving workflow and productivity on the Windows/Linux side, let a guy know.

Apple people gonna Apple.

Also people who own PCs don't podcast as much (I've noticed a pattern here, not my own speculation or guess).

 

Also, the kind of people who do web development usually care about the look of products.

 

9 hours ago, NTF5252 said:

Your problem is you are taking youtube comments seriously.

I said "supposedly". jesus.

 

Come on I'm not idiot. If you're serious about making anything or doing work then PC is the way to go.

[alpenwasser]

1 hour ago, Ryokeen said:

 

I don't think intelligence is the issue...
Sure, you're over-paying for hardware and software, but there has to be compelling reasons for doing so.

I had a very curious experience when I went shopping for a new laptop last year actually. After filtering out products which didn't meet my requirements for one reason or another, Lenovo and Apple were left, and the Macbook Pro turned out to have better price/performance. As in: I spec'd out the Lenovo machines which were possible candidates similarly to the MBP, and they ended up being more expensive by a few hundred. Having said that, at least some Lenovo products seem to be significantly more expensive where I live than elsewhere for some reason.

 

So I ended up with a 15" MBP. Mostly very happy with it, a few niggles and complaints (well, primarily one: The keyboard not having dedicated Insert, Home, Page Up, Page Down and Delete keys is fucking retarded). Though I'm not too big on OSX, so I put Arch Linux on it. Been using that as my primary workhorse for the past year or so, it's doing a nice job of it.

 

As for the topic's question: It might also just be that you notice Macs more when they're being used. Though I can't say for sure, of course. But in the end, OSX, Windows and Linux should allow you to do front-end web development unless you need to use some specific tool for your specific job which is only available on one platform. But in the end, what do you really need? A good editor or IDE, browsers to test out the page, graphics programs? But I might be overlooking something, I'm not a professional front-end dev, after all.

[Dredgy]

2 minutes ago, Ryokeen said:

My bride is a hobbyist turned part-time photographer and when we upgrade our PC, I want to make sure that she has the best foot-forward she can and that our rig will support it. 

Should I really be considering a Mac Pro for her sake, or will a high-res, high quality, high accuracy monitor take care of most of her potential issues? She CAN do great video work (but she doesn't and doesn't plan to - no idea why.)
 

 

Depends what she's used to using. The Mac Pro doesn't come with a monitor if IIRC so you'll still need that high accuracy monitor! Though a high accuracy monitor requires workstation graphics cards to get the most out of them - this can be expensive, and the Mac Pro does include dual FirePros.

 

Also depends on what kind of photos she's working with/planning on working with. For "part time" photographer, a Mac Pro would be grossly overspecced, I would look at something like 5K iMac if you wanted to go the apple route.

 

but if she's doing serious stuff like drastically editing 50 megapixel RAW files than specs will become a lot more important.

 

Theres no one right answer.

[Ryokeen]

2 minutes ago, alpenwasser said:

I had a very curious experience when I went shopping for a new laptop last year actually. After filtering out products which didn't meet my requirements for one reason or another, Lenovo and Apple were left, and the Macbook Pro turned out to have better price/performance. As in: I spec'd out the Lenovo machines which were possible candidates similarly to the MBP, and they ended up being more expensive by a few hundred.

That's a really interesting case study. In my experience, the one MBP I had to buy for a previous job was a factor of 2 greater in cost than any comparable laptop on the market. Though, Laptops are not often cheap and quality, so it doesn't seem entirely unreasonable. 

 

[AlTech]

Just now, alpenwasser said:

I had a very curious experience when I went shopping for a new laptop last year actually. After filtering out products which didn't meet my requirements for one reason or another, Lenovo and Apple were left, and the Macbook Pro turned out to have better price/performance. As in: I spec'd out the Lenovo machines which were possible candidates similarly to the MBP, and they ended up being more expensive by a few hundred. Having said that, at least some Lenovo products seem to be significantly more expensive where I live than elsewhere for some reason.

 

So I ended up with a 15" MBP. Mostly very happy with it, a few niggles and complaints (well, primarily one: The keyboard not having dedicated Insert, Home, Page Up, Page Down and Delete keys is fucking retarded). Though I'm not too big on OSX, so I put Arch Linux on it. Been using that as my primary workhorse for the past year or so, it's doing a nice job of it.

 

As for the topic's question: It might also just be that you notice Macs more when they're being used. Though I can't say for sure, of course. But in the end, OSX, Windows and Linux should allow you to do front-end web development unless you need to use some specific tool for your specific job which is only available on one platform. But in the end, what do you really need? A good editor or IDE, browsers to test out the page, graphics programs?

Yeah, now all platforms are a viable option.

 

Although I would still use Windows cos no point in using one OS for one thing.  If I wanted to do web dev then Linux would be fine but Programming and stuff would be  better on windows (at least in my experience).

[VTF5252]

Just now, AluminiumTech said:

I said "supposedly". jesus.

 

Come on I'm not idiot. If you're serious about making anything or doing work then PC is the way to go.

Sorry i skipped over supposedly when i read it. I also do agree, but to actually add to to discussion...

I think content creators use Mac because everyone expects them to. It's a monkey see monkey do kind of thing.

 

[Syntaxvgm]

Macbooks are very mice machines to develop on. However, only developing on OSX is not a good choice as the font rendering is different. Since most of the audience is on windows, you need to at least run parallels. 

Since i do believe Safari is no longer updated on windows, there's an advantage there, but it is just webkit. 

[Ryokeen]

2 minutes ago, Dredgy said:

 

Theres no one right answer.

The machine we're building will be a high-end editing rig as I'll be doing some design work myself as well as some High-res and 3D rendering. 
Part for Part, a PC seems much cheaper (and I can maintain it myself much more easily) than an Apple product.


 

[ALwin]

17 minutes ago, Ryokeen said:

My bride is a hobbyist turned part-time photographer and when we upgrade our PC, I want to make sure that she has the best foot-forward she can and that our rig will support it. 

Should I really be considering a Mac Pro for her sake, or will a high-res, high quality, high accuracy monitor take care of most of her potential issues? She CAN do great video work (but she doesn't and doesn't plan to - no idea why.)
 

OK my comment here is not about OSX or Windows debate, but more towards your wife's work as a photographer.

 

If she is extremely concerned about color accuracy and the ability to view a wide gamut of colors (e.g. as close to 100% Adobe RGB as possible), what she needs involves 3 things:

• A monitor that can support 10-bit per channel color displays, for example the expensive Eizo ColorEdge Displays.
• OS and software that can support 10-bit per channel color.
• A GPU that can output 10-bit per channel color, such as a nVidia Quadro or AMD FIrePro.  Currently as far as I can tell, none of the nVidia or AMD consumer GPUs support 10-bit color output.

So what advantage does OSX has over Windows that makes it better for people who require color accuracy?  OSX has a better color management system than Windows.  You can buy color calibration tools that work on both OSX and Windows and create custom color profiles after measuring and calibrating the displays, the photo printers, etc.  But the color management system in Windows is buggy, it doesn't persist in keeping the custom color profile you loaded active.  If you run a game or media player or any other software that utilizes it's own color profile, it will override the custom profile you loaded and once you close the program instead of reverting back to your custom profile it defaults back to whatever Windows had originally had as the default.  With OSX, what you load as the active profile remains active.  That's the main advantage OSX current;y has over Windows and this is something Microsoft needs to fix/stabilize.

 

PS: Your wife can use a 5K iMac, as Apple has updated OSX and GPU drivers for it with 10-bit support.  She doesn't need a Mac Pro.  But the native screen of the 5K iMac is still not a 10-bit display, so she will have to use an external monitor that supports wide gamut.

[Dredgy]

6 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

 

Even for any kind of developing, PC is better. Only thing you need a mac for is art and graphics. Nothing else

 

Nope. Professional video editing is very compelling on OSX - in addition to Apples fantastic ProRes Codecs, the hardware compatibility is "better" (things like chroma keyers, standards converters, accelerator cards, capture cards, production switchers etc are often optimzied for Mac use, and while Windows-compatible, often need specific internal hardware to avoid compatibility issues.) There's also more software out there, especially for specialised tasks. There are advantages to Windows to.

 

Also mobile app development - your option for writing an iPhone app on Windows is using Flash Builder which outputs unoptomized junk code. I saw yesterday with the latest update to Visual Studio Enterprise that there are iOS and Android options on there but have not had the chance to try them out.

 

OSX is also a BEAST for high end virtualisation work. All of our print servers and "7 gamers 1 CPU"-style workstation blocks are on Macs.

 

That said, most of our high end development PCs run Windows (mine included) unless we need stuff like massive Tesla grids in which case it's some custom Linux on a supercomputer.

[alpenwasser]

1 hour ago, Ryokeen said:

That's a really interesting case study. In my experience, the one MBP I had to buy for a previous job was a factor of 2 greater in cost than any comparable laptop on the market. Though, Laptops are not often cheap and quality, so it doesn't seem entirely unreasonable. 

 

Yeah, I was very surprised indeed. I should probably point out that I was looking at business-grade laptops, because from a build-quality POV, that's what I'd consider the MBP to be comparable to. I've had some bad experience with consumer-grade laptops, so these days, if in any way possible, I will only buy business-grade machines. And these will be more expensive.

 

One absolutely awesome thing about the Macbook Pro? 16:10 ASPECT RATIO DISPLAY, HELL YEAH!!! None of that 16:9 nonsense.

 

1 hour ago, AluminiumTech said:

Yeah, now all platforms are a viable option.

 

Although I would still use Windows cos no point in using one OS for one thing.  If I wanted to do web dev then Linux would be fine but Programming and stuff would be  better on windows (at least in my experience).

Well, it will depend on what you want to program. DirectX development on Linux is probably not going to be the path of sanity.

 

But for multi-platform stuff based on GTK+ or QT, Linux is viable in my experience. We did that for a project last semester, worked pretty well. Although if you do that, definitely actually make sure your stuff runs on a Windows machine, don't just compile on Linux and hope for the best. We had a few kinks to iron out on that front (well, the guy who was responsible for that part of our project).

 

Aside from that, I do embedded programming with microcontrollers these days (which is mostly C). For that, it will primarily depend if the manufacturer's IDE is available on your platform or not. We used a dsPIC in our project last semester, and Microchip's IDE is indeed available on Linux (and it's actually pretty decent).

 

In the end though, it will also depend on how well you know your platform. If you're very familiar with windows and don't know Linux, well then I wouldn't recommend switching to Linux to code, that just seems like asking for trouble. Me, I'm much more familiar with Linux these days, so unless there's some specific tool forcing me to use Windows, there's not much point in me switching to it. I know the Linux environment much better, so it's also much easier to troubleshoot for me on that platform.

[Dredgy]

6 minutes ago, ALwin said:

But the color management system in Windows is buggy, it doesn't persist in keeping the custom color profile you loaded active. 

Yes, and that's a bitch, but some of the EIZO monitors have a cool in built colour sensor that makes for very decent calibration that is quick and easy enough to use whenever you sit down to an editing session. 

[ALwin]

9 hours ago, alpenwasser said:

One absolutely awesome thing about the Macbook Pro? 16:10 ASPECT RATIO DISPLAY, HELL YEAH!!!

This is one of the reasons, amongst many, why I switched from Windows based laptops to a MacBook.  Initially I was able to buy laptops with 16:10 displays, but they became rarer at the usual consumer price levels.  When I wanted to replace from my old ASUS laptop a few years ago, the only Windows based machine with 16:10 displays were HP Elitebook Workstations which cost as much as a MacBook Pro, and where I lived I couldn't get the custom configuration I wanted whilst for those living in the US, the HP website offered "configure and buy" options.

 

Other reasons included the cheap plastic composite materials used in the case, the thickness, the useless touchpads, etc.  After switching to a MacBook for portability, I have never looked back at Windows laptops.  My desktop workstation is Windows though and that's fine.

 

9 hours ago, Dredgy said:

Yes, and that's a bitch, but some of the EIZO monitors have a cool in built colour sensor that makes for very decent calibration that is quick and easy enough to use whenever you sit down to an editing session. 

Yeah I know some of the more expensive Eizo monitors come with a built in tool.  Soon I am considering adding a Quadro M4000 or M5000 to my workstation so that I can use a 10-bit display.  I'm hoping that I can configure it so that I can use the Quadro for the 10-bit color and wide gamut support while I can use the CUDA cores of my current 2x Titan X GPU's for the rendering and image processing.

[Dredgy]

22 minutes ago, alpenwasser said:

One absolutely awesome thing about the Macbook Pro? 16:10 ASPECT RATIO DISPLAY, HELL YEAH!!! None of that 16:9 nonsense.

I've been using a 10 bit 1:1 monitor for the last 10 days. 16:X is dead to me now.

 

@ALwin I'm doing essentially the same thing now, M5000 (to be replaced with M400 when I actually have to pay for the card) and 2x 780Tis. Am pleased with the results so far.

[ALwin]

10 minutes ago, Dredgy said:

I've been using a 10 bit 1:1 monitor for the last 10 days. 16:X is dead to me now.

 

@ALwin I'm doing essentially the same thing now, M5000 (to be replaced with M400 when I actually have to pay for the card) and 2x 780Tis. Am pleased with the results so far.

So you managed it so that the Quadro is used for the display support and the GeForce cards do the heavy lifting?  Did you have to do any special configuration or third party plugins to get that kind of setup?

[Dredgy]

1 minute ago, ALwin said:

So you managed it so that the Quadro is used for the display support and the GeForce cards do the heavy lifting?  Did you have to do any special configuration or third party plugins to get that kind of setup?

I have it set up like that in theory. The Quadro powers the Eizo 1:1 display at 10 bit (I have no actual way of perceiving if it is working, the monitor is not calibrated and isn't marketed for colour work, and the Quadro just kind of auto detects it.), as well as two other playback monitors.

 

The GeForce cards power my main 3 monitors, allowing for surround gaming while keeping all of my other monitors activated. They are also set as the default processing cards in Premiere, and are working fine).

So all the settings look right, and appear to be working correctly, with no plugins, but I haven't verified that I am getting 10 bit output.