<story><title>Mac’s share falls to five-year low</title><url>http://www.computerworld.com/article/3155088/apple-mac/macs-share-falls-to-five-year-low.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>fritzw</author><text>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&amp;#x27;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 quickly becoming more work with all of there services and issues. When I start having to search for drivers online I might consider switching to Linux, but this won&amp;#x27;t be a cure all, because I deal too much in graphics.</text></item><item><author>gshulegaard</author><text>&amp;gt; the Mac ecosystem is now ingrained into open source development.&lt;p&gt;Interesting...&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;  Anyone who suggests doing this either hasn&amp;#x27;t done it before or has way too much time on their hands.&lt;p&gt;Oh...&lt;p&gt;Quick question, when was the last time you did it?&lt;p&gt;Currently I have three full time Linux boxes:&lt;p&gt;* Custom PC build I did myself&lt;p&gt;* System76 Galago UltraPro&lt;p&gt;* Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition&lt;p&gt;Oddly enough, the one that gave me the most issues was the Dell supported XPS 13 DE but I didn&amp;#x27;t have to do a thing, just waited for driver updates from Dell which I could install via:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; sudo apt-get update&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; sudo apt-get upgrade&lt;p&gt;But at the end of it I have a Linux laptop with premium build quality, 8 hour battery life (with 4K screen), and an external battery pack that easily extends my battery to a full day of work before needing an outlet.&lt;p&gt;My company gave me a Mac, but literally &lt;i&gt;every&lt;/i&gt; other computer I personally own, right down to the Dell T710 server I have is running Linux (Ubuntu 14.04.3 specifically) without issue.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t expect Linux to take over the Desktop market.  But for Developers I see the current MBP as just another reason to seriously consider just getting a Linux laptop from an OEM like Dell or a niche player like System76.&lt;p&gt;Let&amp;#x27;s face it, this MBP just highlights the fact that its target market is not developers or power users.  Which is fine, and it probably can be a successful product with or without us...</text></item><item><author>jameslk</author><text>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&amp;#x27;t buy it at all.&lt;p&gt;First of all, this is market share up to the release of the new MBP. It&amp;#x27;s not surprising that their market share has been slipping given that up to this point they haven&amp;#x27;t released a significant update to the MBP since 2013.&lt;p&gt;But getting to the point, the Mac ecosystem is now ingrained into open source development. Believe me I used to use a PC not too long ago and nothing would work because OS software is designed to run on top of a  NIX environment. I recently had to go through this exercise with a colleague who was in denial. But over time, it ends up the same: software built to run on Linux servers runs best under an environment that is designed more like Linux. He now owns a MBP.&lt;p&gt;So Windows is out (for non .NET devs). That leaves us with what, Linux itself as the OS? Anyone who suggests doing this either hasn&amp;#x27;t done it before or has way too much time on their hands. I use macOS because I don&amp;#x27;t have time to hunt for drivers, trying to understand an obscure error discussed in a long forum thread or having all my software no longer work just because I updated a package. I&amp;#x27;ve already tried that twice once with Gentoo and then with Ubuntu years later hoping it would be different. I know plenty of others who have as well. Ultimately we have jobs and we need to debug our own software.&lt;p&gt;Which brings us back to the Mac. I fully expect this release to be their Windows 8 moment, a beta event from which they will recover from given time for hardware to catch up. Not every release can be a stellar event. Give it time.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gshulegaard</author><text>I guess I implied it in my comment, but I&amp;#x27;ll explicitly say it here:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; I did not search for, manually install, or otherwise fiddle with drivers for any of my current 3 personal machines.&lt;p&gt;I have done so many times in the past, but not for these three[1].&lt;p&gt;This is particularly true for the System76 which not only had drivers pre-installed and the repository configured, but also had &lt;i&gt;no&lt;/i&gt; issues out of the box...or ever in my case.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;Don&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x2F;desktop with OEM support.&lt;p&gt;[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).</text></comment>
<story><title>Mac’s share falls to five-year low</title><url>http://www.computerworld.com/article/3155088/apple-mac/macs-share-falls-to-five-year-low.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>fritzw</author><text>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&amp;#x27;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 quickly becoming more work with all of there services and issues. When I start having to search for drivers online I might consider switching to Linux, but this won&amp;#x27;t be a cure all, because I deal too much in graphics.</text></item><item><author>gshulegaard</author><text>&amp;gt; the Mac ecosystem is now ingrained into open source development.&lt;p&gt;Interesting...&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;  Anyone who suggests doing this either hasn&amp;#x27;t done it before or has way too much time on their hands.&lt;p&gt;Oh...&lt;p&gt;Quick question, when was the last time you did it?&lt;p&gt;Currently I have three full time Linux boxes:&lt;p&gt;* Custom PC build I did myself&lt;p&gt;* System76 Galago UltraPro&lt;p&gt;* Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition&lt;p&gt;Oddly enough, the one that gave me the most issues was the Dell supported XPS 13 DE but I didn&amp;#x27;t have to do a thing, just waited for driver updates from Dell which I could install via:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; sudo apt-get update&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; sudo apt-get upgrade&lt;p&gt;But at the end of it I have a Linux laptop with premium build quality, 8 hour battery life (with 4K screen), and an external battery pack that easily extends my battery to a full day of work before needing an outlet.&lt;p&gt;My company gave me a Mac, but literally &lt;i&gt;every&lt;/i&gt; other computer I personally own, right down to the Dell T710 server I have is running Linux (Ubuntu 14.04.3 specifically) without issue.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t expect Linux to take over the Desktop market.  But for Developers I see the current MBP as just another reason to seriously consider just getting a Linux laptop from an OEM like Dell or a niche player like System76.&lt;p&gt;Let&amp;#x27;s face it, this MBP just highlights the fact that its target market is not developers or power users.  Which is fine, and it probably can be a successful product with or without us...</text></item><item><author>jameslk</author><text>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&amp;#x27;t buy it at all.&lt;p&gt;First of all, this is market share up to the release of the new MBP. It&amp;#x27;s not surprising that their market share has been slipping given that up to this point they haven&amp;#x27;t released a significant update to the MBP since 2013.&lt;p&gt;But getting to the point, the Mac ecosystem is now ingrained into open source development. Believe me I used to use a PC not too long ago and nothing would work because OS software is designed to run on top of a  NIX environment. I recently had to go through this exercise with a colleague who was in denial. But over time, it ends up the same: software built to run on Linux servers runs best under an environment that is designed more like Linux. He now owns a MBP.&lt;p&gt;So Windows is out (for non .NET devs). That leaves us with what, Linux itself as the OS? Anyone who suggests doing this either hasn&amp;#x27;t done it before or has way too much time on their hands. I use macOS because I don&amp;#x27;t have time to hunt for drivers, trying to understand an obscure error discussed in a long forum thread or having all my software no longer work just because I updated a package. I&amp;#x27;ve already tried that twice once with Gentoo and then with Ubuntu years later hoping it would be different. I know plenty of others who have as well. Ultimately we have jobs and we need to debug our own software.&lt;p&gt;Which brings us back to the Mac. I fully expect this release to be their Windows 8 moment, a beta event from which they will recover from given time for hardware to catch up. Not every release can be a stellar event. Give it time.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>eikenberry</author><text>&amp;gt; The second you compile one package to get any of those boxes to work, for me, the pro-linux box argument is negated.&lt;p&gt;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.</text></comment>