The desktop and the developer

a rather nice musical tool, lol, loving it

At the beginning of the article, the author is too quick to dismiss the aesthetic and functional merits of a modern Linux installation. My < $300 chromebook can currently run two variations of Linux, both with aesthetically pleasing desktops and a comfortable trackpad with great multitouch support. This also didn't require much (if any) messing around with settings to achieve.

I'm not sure what to think of this blog post. Do anyone really recognize himself or herself in the described developers?

It's not even about Mac OS X vs GNU/Linux, I'm not using any desktop environment on my computers (no Gnome, KDE, XFCE, …), my graphical environment is composed of a minimal windows manager and a small taskbar. I don't need anything else. I just checked and I don't even have a graphical file browser installed on my laptop which I've been using it for several years now. I spend my time in terminals, Emacs, and my web browser.

I know that this is not the case of every person who's working with computers, but I also know quite a few people in my surroundings who use the same kind of environment (and to my knowledge we're all pretty pleased with our hardware), so I'm convinced that I'm not an exception either.

I had been using Linux for years before finally buying a rMBP -- and it took another four months to install Windows 8.1 on it. Any OS has it's problems, and the question is how easy it is to overcome them. Windows does not have a nice console interface, but everything else is fast and frictionless, there are practically no driver problems, etc. I can more ore less work around the lack of proper console (learning PowerShell helped a lot). On Linux, I had the fantastic, tweakable, console-centric world but I cannot make the GPU drivers to have better power management or implement proper audio-over-HDMI. Also, I cannot make my own Google Drive or OneDrive client.

So it's very sad, really. :(

I think there are additional reasons MacBooks are more popular.

Certainly you can't ignore the bandwagon effect. All the cool kids have MacBooks. I'm not saying that's why everyone owns one, but you can't discount it as a reason.

Also, the hardware is really nice. I know I'm making Stallman cringe when I say it, but Apple makes products that are enjoyable to use. And if you're going to use the Apple hardware, OS X is the path of least resistance.

Lastly, and the author does touch on this, OS X is nice because it can be used "both ways" - it has a pretty GUI, and it has keyboard shortcuts, programmability, and "Unixness" built in. I haven't come across a Linux/BSD desktop environment that I can use in my hacker's way, and my wife can use in her point-and-click way.