A Mac as a work machine?

[Gordolio]

The comments at the end of the WAN show today had me concerned a bit. Linus was surprised that an employee asked for a Mac. And a web developer, no less. I thought I'd jump on the forum to give my opinion.

 

I'm a web developer. Java, Ruby, Perl, Javascript, Sass... the full stack. My preferred IDE is anything JetBrains with the Vim plugin installed. I'm also a command line guy; zsh is my preferred shell.

 

I have developed full-time on Windows, Mac, and Linux. Comparing each machine I'll say, give me a Mac every time. I don't care if it has a slower processor. But before you write me off as a fanboy, here me out...

 

The work flow I use is much more tuned on a unix/linux machine. I'm able to be much more efficient in this environment. Some things are just easier to do on a *nix environment. So many developer tools are written for the *nix environment. And virtually all of them run on the Mac without any sort of emulation. Most of the main ones run on Windows. If I'm given a Windows machine, the first thing I do is install Chrome, the second is install Cygwin. So they will run, but often have limited compatibility. A big one is git. Git is heavily dependent on a *nix environment. Of course it runs on Windows (with a posix backend supporting it), but any advanced git user can tell you about problems that they've had while running on Windows.

 

You might say, "Why run on a Mac? Why not just use Linux? It's *nix and it's free, right?" Yes. Linux is free and will run on a PC, but it's also nice to not have to mess with driver compatibility on the machine you use every day. And there are still rendering problems with some of the modern window management systems in the Centos, Ubuntu, and Mint if you work on a hi-res monitor. Not a problem on a Mac.

 

I hope I'm not written off as a fan boy. I game on an i7-6700k and Nvidia 1080ti. It's one I built myself with hardline watercooling and UV luminescent cables that I sleeved. I'm an enthusiast like the rest of you. Which is why I watch the videos and why I'm on this forum. But I also think that Mac users are treated like 2nd rate citizens in the tech-tips-topia.

 

Linus, if your developer wants a Mac mini, then get him one! He'll be much a happier and better developer for it. And if you do, then don't hide it. You'll attract more talent if you're open to Mac developers.

[FuzzyYellow]

Yep. My former boss runs a web development company (and develops himself) and he is a Mac guy.

 

actually, he has an account here now. @joebuhlig .

[PeachyUwUSenpai]

22 minutes ago, Gordolio said:

The comments at the end of the WAN show today had me concerned a bit. Linus was surprised that an employee asked for a Mac. And a web developer, no less. I thought I'd jump on the forum to give my opinion.

 

I'm a web developer. Java, Ruby, Perl, Javascript, Sass... the full stack. My preferred IDE is anything JetBrains with the Vim plugin installed. I'm also a command line guy; zsh is my preferred shell.

 

I have developed full-time on Windows, Mac, and Linux. Comparing each machine I'll say, give me a Mac every time. I don't care if it has a slower processor. But before you write me off as a fanboy, here me out...

 

The work flow I use is much more tuned on a unix/linux machine. I'm able to be much more efficient in this environment. Some things are just easier to do on a *nix environment. So many developer tools are written for the *nix environment. And virtually all of them run on the Mac without any sort of emulation. Most of the main ones run on Windows. If I'm given a Windows machine, the first thing I do is install Chrome, the second is install Cygwin. So they will run, but often have limited compatibility. A big one is git. Git is heavily dependent on a *nix environment. Of course it runs on Windows (with a posix backend supporting it), but any advanced git user can tell you about problems that they've had while running on Windows.

 

You might say, "Why run on a Mac? Why not just use Linux? It's *nix and it's free, right?" Yes. Linux is free and will run on a PC, but it's also nice to not have to mess with driver compatibility on the machine you use every day. And there are still rendering problems with some of the modern window management systems in the Centos, Ubuntu, and Mint if you work on a hi-res monitor. Not a problem on a Mac.

 

I hope I'm not written off as a fan boy. I game on an i7-6700k and Nvidia 1080ti. It's one I built myself with hardline watercooling and UV luminescent cables that I sleeved. I'm an enthusiast like the rest of you. Which is why I watch the videos and why I'm on this forum. But I also think that Mac users are treated like 2nd rate citizens in the tech-tips-topia.

 

Linus, if your developer wants a Mac mini, then get him one! He'll be much a happier and better developer for it. And if you do, then don't hide it. You'll attract more talent if you're open to Mac developers.

a lot of your linux complaints are not really relevant any more the office i work at is pretty split the main people who use macs though make iphone apps and thats one of the only ways to do it easily is to use a mac. but some of my other co workers with a mac literally just have a ubuntu vm running on there 5k mac all the time as there main os. i've run ubuntu, rhel, fedora with no issues on high res screens including triple 4ks. and as for easy graphic drivers install ubuntu makes it stupidly easy and works natively. but yeah mostly what i've learned is most mac programmers are linux users they just tend to be to scared to switch which is a pain since mac and linux aren't actually compatible so i've seen issues of people going well it worked on my mac and it not working on the servers. but yeah in general its more about the cost since even the highest end origin pc i could build came in 7 grand cheaper then a mac with the mac having worse specs. but yeah id rather just have my 64 gigs of ram and a 8770k

[DrMacintosh]

Its not like Windows was created with this stuff in mind. Powershell was created because of how limiting Windows is for this kind of stuff. 

 

Acknowledging that a Mac is better as some things than a PC running Windows does not make you a fanboy, it makes you intelligent. 

[Lord Mirdalan]

I agree, a Mac can be a nice "turnkey Linux" solution. (I do understand that macOS is not Linux, but there are many similarities).

 

And for development, you may not need the balls-to-the-wall specs of an enthusiast PC - a Mac will do fine. I personally use macOS, Win, and Linux, and they each shine in their own way. (They also each suck in varied ways, but that's a conversation for another day).

 

Can we please not attack each other for personal preference? By condemning a particular OS as "bad", you gain nothing, and end any chance of being able to appreciate the great features it may (or may not) have.

 

And lastly, I'd also like to see LTT give Macs some love. How about a Hackintosh built in an old Mac Pro tower? I'd watch that...

[N1NJ4W4RR10R]

Driver problems would be fixed via running AMD stuff. Tmk intel/Nvidia drivers on Linux are awful (because OP source sucks, right guy?!).

 

*That may actually only apply to Nvidia. Not sure if Intel actually supports Linux driver wise.

[FuzzyYellow]

10 hours ago, Alaradia said:

a lot of your linux complaints are not really relevant any more the office i work at is pretty split the main people who use macs though make iphone apps and thats one of the only ways to do it easily is to use a mac. but some of my other co workers with a mac literally just have a ubuntu vm running on there 5k mac all the time as there main os. i've run ubuntu, rhel, fedora with no issues on high res screens including triple 4ks. and as for easy graphic drivers install ubuntu makes it stupidly easy and works natively. but yeah mostly what i've learned is most mac programmers are linux users they just tend to be to scared to switch which is a pain since mac and linux aren't actually compatible so i've seen issues of people going well it worked on my mac and it not working on the servers. but yeah in general its more about the cost since even the highest end origin pc i could build came in 7 grand cheaper then a mac with the mac having worse specs. but yeah id rather just have my 64 gigs of ram and a 8770k

Linux, even Ubuntu is FAR from plug and play. I have yet to get a reliable Linux distro running on my machine. Wireless adapters are flakey, battery life is hell on notebooks. I would LOVE to daily drive Linux, but it truly isn’t there yet. It’s getting close, but not quite.

8 hours ago, N1NJ4W4RR10R said:

Driver problems would be fixed via running AMD stuff. Tmk intel/Nvidia drivers on Linux are awful (because OP source sucks, right guy?!).

 

*That may actually only apply to Nvidia. Not sure if Intel actually supports Linux driver wise.

Interesting. I’ve had the exact opposite be true in my experience. AMD drivers have been nothing but a headache, even preventing successfully booting many many many times. Nvidia and intel just work out of the box.

[Drak3]

2 hours ago, FuzzyYellow said:

I would LOVE to daily drive Linux, but it truly isn’t there yet.

OSX or TrueOS. All the benefit, none of the downside.

[GoodBytes]

13 hours ago, Gordolio said:

The comments at the end of the WAN show today had me concerned a bit. Linus was surprised that an employee asked for a Mac. And a web developer, no less. I thought I'd jump on the forum to give my opinion.

 

I'm a web developer. Java, Ruby, Perl, Javascript, Sass... the full stack. My preferred IDE is anything JetBrains with the Vim plugin installed. I'm also a command line guy; zsh is my preferred shell.

All JetBrain suits runs under Windows.

Quote

The work flow I use is much more tuned on a unix/linux machine. I'm able to be much more efficient in this environment. Some things are just easier to do on a *nix environment. So many developer tools are written for the *nix environment. And virtually all of them run on the Mac without any sort of emulation. Most of the main ones run on Windows. If I'm given a Windows machine, the first thing I do is install Chrome, the second is install Cygwin. So they will run, but often have limited compatibility. A big one is git. Git is heavily dependent on a *nix environment. Of course it runs on Windows (with a posix backend supporting it), but any advanced git user can tell you about problems that they've had while running on Windows.

Vim / Vi is accessible through Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL - A technology that allows your to run Linux OS and programs under Windows 10 natively), where you can install and run Linux version of Apache, NGINX, and anything else you want. Available official distros are, so far: Ubuntu, Kali Linux, Debian, Alpine, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, openSUSE Leap. Unofficial one: Fedora Remix

 

 SSH Client and Server is supported natively under Windows 10. Works the same way as under Linux. No Cygwin or PuTTY needed.

 

Also, you should not limit yourself to Chrome. If you live in a world where Chrome is the only choice, then you are part of the problem in re-creating IE6 monopoly all over again, but with Chrome instead, and Google has full control on the web.

[DrMacintosh]

7 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

Also, you should not limit yourself to Chrome.

Sadly Chrome has the best extensions. Actually I only use 1 extension that isn't available on any other browser  

[wasab]

Heck no. Mac is weak sauce hardware. Developing on weak sauce hardware's are a bad idea. 

[Drak3]

Just now, wasab said:

Mac is weak sauce hardware.

Not really the case in the past few years.

[wasab]

Just now, Drak3 said:

Not really the case in the past few years.

How so? Unless you wish to drop 2 grands, the hardware's are going to be anything from weak sauce to mediocre. 

[Drak3]

Just now, wasab said:

How so? Unless you wish to drop 2 grands, the hardware's are going to be anything from weak sauce to mediocre. 

The processors in the Mac Mini aren't exactly "weak sauce," and the historic audience of the machine don't typically run GPU intensive tasks.

The iMac lineup also is squarely rocking mid to upper mid end hardware when you ignore the base 21.5," which is more than what can be said for most other AiO systems in the price bracket.

 

The only "weak sauce" options are the MacBook, MacBook Air, and 13" non touchbar MacBook Pro. But again, historically the audience don't necessarily benefit from extra hardware.

 

And for development, a simple dual core with an iGPU can easily be enough, or anything short of the 7980XE and quad Titan Vs might be insufficient. It all depends on what you're developing.

[tikker]

3 hours ago, FuzzyYellow said:

Linux, even Ubuntu is FAR from plug and play. I have yet to get a reliable Linux distro running on my machine. Wireless adapters are flakey, battery life is hell on notebooks. I would LOVE to daily drive Linux, but it truly isn’t there yet. It’s getting close, but not quite.

Fedora is my daily driver on my XPS 13 (2017 model) for more than a year now and I have yet to run into deal breaking incompatabilities. The only problem I had was that Dell's multi adapter's HDMI output didn't work, that had to do with thunderbolt support in the kernel. Aside from that specific port on that dongle, everything worked out of the box and battery life is great. It still gets me through a full day at work with no problems.

 

I think it's also in part due to the wide variety of hardware Linux runs/has to run on compared to macOS, so you'll find out sooner that it doesn't work with something. You can't run macOS on anything else than Apple's chosen hardware.

 

I agree that Linux isn't always plug and play and can be pretty damn annoying at times, but Ubuntu and Fedora (the latter more than the former in my experience) come pretty close. I only wish I'd have stuff like Keynote (or even just Office) available. Some clones are decent, but nothing gets really close to those things for me.

[FuzzyYellow]

3 hours ago, tikker said:

Fedora is my daily driver on my XPS 13 (2017 model) for more than a year now and I have yet to run into deal breaking incompatabilities. The only problem I had was that Dell's multi adapter's HDMI output didn't work, that had to do with thunderbolt support in the kernel. Aside from that specific port on that dongle, everything worked out of the box and battery life is great. It still gets me through a full day at work with no problems.

 

I think it's also in part due to the wide variety of hardware Linux runs/has to run on compared to macOS, so you'll find out sooner that it doesn't work with something. You can't run macOS on anything else than Apple's chosen hardware.

 

I agree that Linux isn't always plug and play and can be pretty damn annoying at times, but Ubuntu and Fedora (the latter more than the former in my experience) come pretty close. I only wish I'd have stuff like Keynote (or even just Office) available. Some clones are decent, but nothing gets really close to those things for me.

Glad to hear it's working well for you.  I'll just say that I've had a hell of a time just getting things up and running on my MacBook. On my 2011 I couldn't get it to boot without running in safe mode due to graphic driver issues (yay AMD). no matter which driver I used, it wouldn't work. now with my 2012 it boots, (yay Nvidia GPU) but it runs REALLY hot and I have yet to get the wireless card working, which is interesting considering it's the same card as with the 2011. Literally the same exact wireless physical card. 

 

I've honestly given up until I'm on a device with a single GPU and more time.

 

4 hours ago, Drak3 said:

OSX or TrueOS. All the benefit, none of the downside.

OSX? you mean MacOS? 

 

I've heard of TrueOS. I'll have to look into it.

4 hours ago, wasab said:

Heck no. Mac is weak sauce hardware. Developing on weak sauce hardware's are a bad idea. 

in what way? MacBooks have always competed with similar machines from HP, Dell, Lenovo, Etc, and the iMac pro can be specced with an 18 core processor and 128GB of RAM if you want it. what's weak sauce about that?

[Drak3]

1 minute ago, FuzzyYellow said:

OSX? you mean MacOS? 

It's been called that for a year. It's been called OSX for at least 5 years. And until they move onto Mac OS 11, I'm going to maintain OSX.

[Guest]

14 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

It's been called that for a year. It's been called OSX for at least 5 years. And until they move onto Mac OS 11, I'm going to maintain OSX.

It is called MacOS now, as of like Sierra or something, but nobody really cares. 

[Drak3]

Just now, floofer said:

It is called MacOS now, as of like Sierra or something, but nobody really cares. 

High Sierra.

 

Sierra was still just the OSX shorthand.

[Guest]

Just now, Drak3 said:

High Sierra.

 

Sierra was still just the OSX shorthand.

 

Sorry you are wrong  

[wasab]

2 hours ago, FuzzyYellow said:

OSX? you mean MacOS? 

 

I've heard of TrueOS. I'll have to look into it.

in what way? MacBooks have always competed with similar machines from HP, Dell, Lenovo, Etc, and the iMac pro can be specced with an 18 core processor and 128GB of RAM if you want it. what's weak sauce about that?

can a mac have 4 32 cores server xenon fitted into a 4 socket motherboard or mount 4 titan x cards on it or do a 64 gb ram configuration? It is weak sauce. 

 

3 hours ago, Drak3 said:

The processors in the Mac Mini aren't exactly "weak sauce," and the historic audience of the machine don't typically run GPU intensive tasks.

The iMac lineup also is squarely rocking mid to upper mid end hardware when you ignore the base 21.5," which is more than what can be said for most other AiO systems in the price bracket.

 

The only "weak sauce" options are the MacBook, MacBook Air, and 13" non touchbar MacBook Pro. But again, historically the audience don't necessarily benefit from extra hardware.

 

And for development, a simple dual core with an iGPU can easily be enough, or anything short of the 7980XE and quad Titan Vs might be insufficient. It all depends on what you're developing.

oh please,

https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/mac-mini

how is $1,099 for an i5 and 8 gb ram not weak sauce? I should be seeing at least a core i7 in this price range. 

[SnowyMus]

41 minutes ago, wasab said:

oh please,

https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/mac-mini

how is $1,099 for an i5 and 8 gb ram not weak sauce? I should be seeing at least a core i7 in this price range. 

I wouldn't consider a hexacore i5 to be "weak sauce". As for 8 GB of RAM, while I do agree that it is lackluster, this isn't exactly a workstation. It's a small form factor desktop computer designed for people who just need a decently fast desktop PC.

 

45 minutes ago, wasab said:

can a mac have 4 32 cores server xenon fitted into a 4 socket motherboard or mount 4 titan x cards on it or do a 64 gb ram configuration? It is weak sauce. 

Xeon CPUs only go up to 28 cores per CPU socket, so no PC can do that. Also, I'm wondering how you plan on fitting four Titan X cards into a PC the size of a Mac Mini.

 

As for 64 GB, the iMac Pro can supports up to 128 GB.

 

Yes, for $1099, I agree that when you consider only performance, the Mac Mini isn't a good value and you could easily build a $1100 PC that would run laps around any $1100 prebuilt PC, especially a Mac. I personally wouldn't buy a Mac because of that as well as the lack of options, plus I really enjoy building PCs. Performance isn't the be all and end all for everyone, though. Some people just like using Macs, and I think that's fair.

 

[Drak3]

37 minutes ago, floofer said:

Sorry you are wrong

 

11 hours ago, floofer said:

I should block @Drak3 but secretly I know he's always right. 

Game.

Set.

Over!

 

Spoiler

 

[Guest]

16 hours ago, Gordolio said:

The work flow I use is much more tuned on a unix/linux machine. I'm able to be much more efficient in this environment. Some things are just easier to do on a *nix environment. So many developer tools are written for the *nix environment. And virtually all of them run on the Mac without any sort of emulation. Most of the main ones run on Windows. If I'm given a Windows machine, the first thing I do is install Chrome, the second is install Cygwin. So they will run, but often have limited compatibility. A big one is git. Git is heavily dependent on a *nix environment. Of course it runs on Windows (with a posix backend supporting it), but any advanced git user can tell you about problems that they've had while running on Windows.

 

You might say, "Why run on a Mac? Why not just use Linux? It's *nix and it's free, right?" Yes. Linux is free and will run on a PC, but it's also nice to not have to mess with driver compatibility on the machine you use every day. And there are still rendering problems with some of the modern window management systems in the Centos, Ubuntu, and Mint if you work on a hi-res monitor. Not a problem on a Mac.

5 hours ago, FuzzyYellow said:

Linux, even Ubuntu is FAR from plug and play. I have yet to get a reliable Linux distro running on my machine. Wireless adapters are flakey, battery life is hell on notebooks. I would LOVE to daily drive Linux, but it truly isn’t there yet. It’s getting close, but not quite.

Either a mac or a ThinkPad with Linux, or XPS which have a developer edition with ubuntu, they are perfectly supported with linux and work like a charm without driver incompatibility and shitty battery life (often caused by not installing the proper driver with the driver manager in optimus systems)

Also hipdpi displays are supported as well in the recent linux versions

I use currently an XPS and pretty much on my work I rely heavily on a *nix environment, so far is working great, you only have to install the nvidia graphics driver, i got major issues with sound card driver bugs in my desktop but I ditched it and using Windows to game on it. Guess I have to wait until they fix it

Edited February 23, 2019 by Guest

[FuzzyYellow]

11 minutes ago, Kavawuvi said:

I wouldn't consider a hexacore i5 to be "weak sauce". As for 8 GB of RAM, while I do agree that it is lackluster, this isn't exactly a workstation. It's a small form factor desktop computer designed for people who just need a decently fast desktop PC.

 

Xeon CPUs only go up to 28 cores per CPU socket, so no PC can do that. Also, I'm wondering how you plan on fitting four Titan X cards into a PC the size of a Mac Mini.

 

As for 64 GB, the iMac Pro can supports up to 128 GB.

 

Yes, for $1099, I agree that when you consider only performance, the Mac Mini isn't a good value and you could easily build a $1100 PC that would run laps around any $1100 prebuilt PC, especially a Mac. I personally wouldn't buy a Mac because of that as well as the lack of options, plus I really enjoy building PCs. Performance isn't the be all and end all for everyone, though. Some people just like using Macs, and I think that's fair.

 

this. 

 

plus, who compares a freaking server to a desktop all in one? that's not what we're talking about here.