The answer to a slightly more on-topic question: why would I develop for macOS? The answer to that is really "I mostly don't". macOS lets you do this, and as annoying as it is to keep doing all of this it hasn't yet gotten to the point where it's enough of a drag to make me stop using it. Apple thinks some operation is something only their code should do? Well they can pound sand, I can turn off AMFI. Want to let your shell script manage your mail messages? Insert it into the TCC database. Want to debug a system process? Turn off SIP. Out of the box, it might be approaching that point, but macOS holds the trump card of being able to pretty much turn off everything you don't want. While it's often compared to iOS in how annoying and locked-down it is, it's really nowhere close. And by this point I have enough macOS experience that while I counter-intuitively probably have more complaints about the OS than most other people, I also generally know how to fix it. And it works extremely well with all my other hardware, which is something that Linux still doesn't really do well. To answer the question of why I use a Mac: mostly because the hardware is good (I'm on a early 2015 MacBook Pro), the software consistent and high-quality (I refuse to run Electron) and the tooling fairly decent (I have UNIX, and MacPorts, and I can compile the rest). However, it's still only a small fraction as of now, so the question is still valid :) You may find it interesting that I actually use Linux an increasing amount of my time. I actually get it a lot less than I would expect, so no need for an apology. The thought of replacing my MacBook Air with an X-series ThinkPad sounds really enticing, as well as one day replacing my Mac Pro with a Threadripper build. I'm still using my Macs (albeit they're still running Mojave), but my long-term plan is to switch to Linux or FreeBSD, though I might keep a Mac around for Keynote use unless a compelling competitor for Linux emerges. The move toward soldered RAM and SSDs throughout most of their lineup, the increased locking down of macOS (especially with Catalina's enforced notarization), the stagnation of the Mac Pro and then the doubling of price of the entry-level Mac Pro in 2019 from $2,999 to $5,999, and the butterfly keyboard fiasco (although finally completely over as of this week) have pushed me toward a greater appreciation of the Linux/BSD ecosystem, despite its shortcomings. Unfortunately I've been disappointed with Apple's stewardship of the Mac under Tim Cook. I also loved the stability and quality of the operating system, not to mention that it looked wonderful. For a long time macOS was the marriage of Unix with commercial hardware support (even if tied to a specific manufacturer) and support for major proprietary software products such as Microsoft Office. I've been a Mac user since 2006, and I currently own a 2013 MacBook Air and a 2013 Mac Pro that I both regularly use. I require that my tools do what I tell them, not the other way around. But this is the end of the road for me and the Mac. And my personal Mac laptop is probably good for quite a while yet - I tend to get 7+ years out of them. We'll probably keep using Macs at work out of inertia, and it is a lot easier for me to use other resources there. Then the sandboxing, weird parallel fire permission systems/quarantining, new filesystem conventions/restrictions and so on made it incredibly difficult to treat, well, like a unix workstation. It has nice consumer apps for when you need them and is a solid, if not always up to date, unix. It is solid, generally stable (although that's been slipping), and certainly has by far the best window manager. The Mac has long been the best unix workstation on the market. I should note that I don't write mac-specific code - I mainly write things that target Linux servers. App signing has always been inexplicably horrible other than Cupertino contempt for their developers, I really don't know what would explain it, it certainly doesn't have to be that way.īut things have gotten worse for developers recently with Catalina.
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