Mac’s share falls to five-year low • Hacker News Board

Re: Mac’s share falls to five-year low

#61

Post by eikenberry » Tue, Jan 10, 2017, 8:23 PM UTC

fritzw wrote: post #57

gshulegaard wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the Mac ecosystem is now ingrained into open source development. Interesting... > Anyone who suggests doing this either hasn't done it before or has way too much time on their hands. Oh... Quick question, when was the last time you did it? Currently I have three full time Linux boxes: * Custom PC build I did myself * System76 Galago UltraPro * Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition Oddly enough, the one that gave me the mos…

The second you compile one package to get any of those boxes to work, for me, the pro-linux box argument is negated. Particularly for work machines, I don't have time to compile and install just to get my box up and running. Mac worked for me for this reason, I presume the reasons are the same for many. You like the freedom and power your boxes allot you, I like the simple operation of the mac. My problem is Macs are…

> The second you compile one package to get any of those boxes to work, for me, the pro-linux box argument is negated.

This seems a strange things to say considering everyone I know who uses a Mac for dev uses homebrew, which compiles as part of the install.

Re: Mac’s share falls to five-year low

#62

Post by 8draco8 » Tue, Jan 10, 2017, 8:24 PM UTC

SnowingXIV wrote: post #50

jameslk wrote: post #36

I keeping hearing the narrative from this crowd that the MBP is on its way out of being in vogue for developers, but I don't buy it at all. First of all, this is market share up to the release of the new MBP. It's not surprising that their market share has been slipping given that up to this point they haven't released a significant update to the MBP since 2013. But getting to the point, the Mac ecosystem is now ingr…

Great point. I recently bought the new MBP with Touchbar and was hesitant for the myriad reasons that were previously mentioned. Before I pulled the trigger I went to setup my dev environment on a fresh Linux partition at home (mainly a windows machine). I was fighting things all over the place to get it to a state of usefulness and productivity. I spent too much time doing this and still kept running into little iss…

I will disagree because difficulty of dev env setup highly depends on dev stack and most of them are easier to configure on linux. First of all on Linux you have to know what you are doing. Linux is first and foremost a system build by sysadmins for sysadmins. Of course a lot of stuff was done by developers but to properly manage dev environment installed on linux you have to be at least partially sysadmin. If you are looking to install full dev stack as all in one package then look elsewhere

Re: Mac’s share falls to five-year low

#63

Post by quickben » Tue, Jan 10, 2017, 8:25 PM UTC

electic wrote: post #35

akgerber wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I believe your assertion that building a PC makes people love it for life— I built a PC in high school, then switched over to a Macbook for college and haven't looked back. Now that fiddling with computers is my job, it's less appealing as a hobby.

Agree. I used to build PCs as well. I even had a review site that received 2MM uniques a month and manufacturers would send me motherboards and top end video cards, for free, to review. I loved making PCs but would I trade my Macbook Pro and go back to a PC/Windows setup, no. I don't imagine anyone would want to go thru that. Getting a case, fiddling with screws, power supplies, Video Card, and CPUs. Even worse, it i…

Arguably, you a trading the chance to lose 800 with a guaranteed loss of around that much, just by paying the Apple premium.

Re: Mac’s share falls to five-year low

#64

Post by robotmlg » Tue, Jan 10, 2017, 8:26 PM UTC

eikenberry wrote: post #61

fritzw wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The second you compile one package to get any of those boxes to work, for me, the pro-linux box argument is negated. Particularly for work machines, I don't have time to compile and install just to get my box up and running. Mac worked for me for this reason, I presume the reasons are the same for many. You like the freedom and power your boxes allot you, I like the simple operation of the mac. My problem is Macs are…

> The second you compile one package to get any of those boxes to work, for me, the pro-linux box argument is negated. This seems a strange things to say considering everyone I know who uses a Mac for dev uses homebrew, which compiles as part of the install.

Homebrew tries to download a binary for pretty much every package, and only rarely compiles from source.

Re: Mac’s share falls to five-year low

#65

Post by gshulegaard » Tue, Jan 10, 2017, 8:29 PM UTC

fritzw wrote: post #57

gshulegaard wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the Mac ecosystem is now ingrained into open source development. Interesting... > Anyone who suggests doing this either hasn't done it before or has way too much time on their hands. Oh... Quick question, when was the last time you did it? Currently I have three full time Linux boxes: * Custom PC build I did myself * System76 Galago UltraPro * Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition Oddly enough, the one that gave me the mos…

The second you compile one package to get any of those boxes to work, for me, the pro-linux box argument is negated. Particularly for work machines, I don't have time to compile and install just to get my box up and running. Mac worked for me for this reason, I presume the reasons are the same for many. You like the freedom and power your boxes allot you, I like the simple operation of the mac. My problem is Macs are…

I guess I implied it in my comment, but I'll explicitly say it here:

> I did not search for, manually install, or otherwise fiddle with drivers for any of my current 3 personal machines.

I have done so many times in the past, but not for these three[1].

This is particularly true for the System76 which not only had drivers pre-installed and the repository configured, but also had no issues out of the box...or ever in my case.

Dell had the drivers installed and the repo pre-configured...but out of the box there were some bugs in various drivers at release...but again for me it was a matter of waiting for a fix and just doing a regular `apt-get` update process...none of the typical online support forum crawling I typically am used to.

Don't get me wrong, there are many other things that might dissuade you from going the Linux route, but driver headaches of old are largely gone, especially if you get a laptop/desktop with OEM support.

[1] Aside for the aforementioned `update` and `upgrade` combination using the `apt-get` packaging system...but the relevant repositories were already configured (or configured automatically as is the case for custom build).

Re: Mac’s share falls to five-year low

#66

Post by Someone1234 » Tue, Jan 10, 2017, 8:30 PM UTC

davidf18 wrote: post #58

IBM for one is converting their laptops to mostly Macs, claiming to calls to support is way down compared with users of PCs (e.g., look at total cost of ownership -- TCO). IBM has software which helps to deploy Macs in the Enterprise. The integration of Macs/ Mac OS with the iPhone / iPad eco-system is helpful as well. I use iMessage a lot on my Mac. For those that need it, tech support is readily available in Apple…

IBM is selling enterprise Apple support, them claiming that the TCO is lower is like a car salesman telling you the TCO of their specific brand of vehicle is lower. Take it with a huge grain of salt. IBM has a vested interest in pushing Mac enterprise adoption.

Re: Mac’s share falls to five-year low

#67

Post by jameslk » Tue, Jan 10, 2017, 8:31 PM UTC

gshulegaard wrote: post #51

jameslk wrote: post #36

I keeping hearing the narrative from this crowd that the MBP is on its way out of being in vogue for developers, but I don't buy it at all. First of all, this is market share up to the release of the new MBP. It's not surprising that their market share has been slipping given that up to this point they haven't released a significant update to the MBP since 2013. But getting to the point, the Mac ecosystem is now ingr…

> the Mac ecosystem is now ingrained into open source development. Interesting... > Anyone who suggests doing this either hasn't done it before or has way too much time on their hands. Oh... Quick question, when was the last time you did it? Currently I have three full time Linux boxes: * Custom PC build I did myself * System76 Galago UltraPro * Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition Oddly enough, the one that gave me the mos…

> Quick question, when was the last time you did it?

Gentoo was circa 2005 and Ubuntu was circa 2012. I spent months trying to make it work, but it was too much. Software ran slower, installing package updates was like playing Minesweeper and worst of all, I had to use Wine. A friend of mine tried it as recently as 2014, then gave up as expected.

> Currently I have three full time Linux boxes:

I'm glad it works for you. Maybe you have more experience with Linux than I? Or maybe more patience? Or time? Or maybe I'm wrong? Regardless, for my multiple attempts over the course of months trying to make it work, I couldn't stand it. I'm sure others can and I would encourage them to try, at the very least just for the experience.

> Let's face it, this MBP just highlights the fact that its target market is not developers or power users.

That may be your opinion. Time will tell if its a trend. Given the way things stand today, I don't really see it being the case, at least in the short term. I'm waiting for the next release.

Re: Mac’s share falls to five-year low

#68

Post by walshemj » Tue, Jan 10, 2017, 8:37 PM UTC

jameslk wrote: post #36

I keeping hearing the narrative from this crowd that the MBP is on its way out of being in vogue for developers, but I don't buy it at all. First of all, this is market share up to the release of the new MBP. It's not surprising that their market share has been slipping given that up to this point they haven't released a significant update to the MBP since 2013. But getting to the point, the Mac ecosystem is now ingr…

The MAC version of Unix diferers considerably from Linux.

There is plenty of OS software for PC's.

I think your trying to defend Apple when they seem to be disengaging from the "professional" market

Re: Mac’s share falls to five-year low

#69

Post by gshulegaard » Tue, Jan 10, 2017, 8:39 PM UTC

jameslk wrote: post #67

gshulegaard wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the Mac ecosystem is now ingrained into open source development. Interesting... > Anyone who suggests doing this either hasn't done it before or has way too much time on their hands. Oh... Quick question, when was the last time you did it? Currently I have three full time Linux boxes: * Custom PC build I did myself * System76 Galago UltraPro * Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition Oddly enough, the one that gave me the mos…

> Quick question, when was the last time you did it? Gentoo was circa 2005 and Ubuntu was circa 2012. I spent months trying to make it work, but it was too much. Software ran slower, installing package updates was like playing Minesweeper and worst of all, I had to use Wine. A friend of mine tried it as recently as 2014, then gave up as expected. > Currently I have three full time Linux boxes: I'm glad it works for y…

> Gentoo was circa 2005 and Ubuntu was circa 2012. I spent months trying to make it work, but it was too much. Software ran slower, installing package updates was like playing Minesweeper and worst of all, I had to use Wine. A friend of mine tried it as recently as 2014, then gave up as expected.

Ah cool! The reason I asked is that a lot has changed in the last four years or so. Dell's Sputnik (http://www.dell.com/developers) program is the one that specifically comes to my mind. But it is possible to buy a variety of Dell workstation models with Linux pre-installed with support. And according to the recent new product blog (https://bartongeorge.io/2017/01/09/welcome-the-new-ubuntu-ba...) the Sputnik project only released the first 13" DE a little less than 4 years ago.

So I was asking since I thought it might be neat to know about some of the changes in the landscape (provided you haven't attempted in a while :) ...)

Edit: Forgot to mention, that Dell's efforts generally improve the Linux driver ecosystem as well since they upstream their drivers to the kernel:

> as many drivers developed for the laptop are "upstreamed" to the Linux kernel [1]

[1] http://www.infoworld.com/article/3046115/linux/love-linux-du...

Re: Mac’s share falls to five-year low

#70

Post by walshemj » Tue, Jan 10, 2017, 8:40 PM UTC

derefr wrote: post #42

jameslk wrote: post #36

I keeping hearing the narrative from this crowd that the MBP is on its way out of being in vogue for developers, but I don't buy it at all. First of all, this is market share up to the release of the new MBP. It's not surprising that their market share has been slipping given that up to this point they haven't released a significant update to the MBP since 2013. But getting to the point, the Mac ecosystem is now ingr…

> I used to use a PC not too long ago and nothing would work Was this before or after the Windows 10 WSL environment was released? I think that has done a lot to change developers' views on doing ＊NIX development on Windows.

why would you do ＊NIX development on anything other than the actual kit the code is going to be running on?