On Tuesday, February 25, 2014 11:00:14 PM UTC+1, Jason H., Rubyist
wrote:
I’m interested in purchasing a Mac to put myself on the same page as other
software developers. (I’m used to Linux distros that provide the look and
feel of Windows XP.) I will use the Mac for software development projects,
but I intend to stick with my Linux-powered PCs for general computing. (I
don’t want to get locked into the Mac world, because it’s so much more
expensive. Also, there is a case to be made for being versatile.)
If your only purpose is Rails development, it may not be worth it. I
use
my laptop for Rails, Mac and iOS development, so a Mac is necessary for
me.
The only benefit for me for Rails-specific development is the BSD-based
unix which I like better than Linux, and TextMate, and the MacOS
consistent
and pleasant look and feel of operating the computer which is very
important to me. Also, over the years I’ve occasionally used the 3-year
no
questions asked warranty and decent network of Apple stores to have a
machine fixed quickly and reduce my down-time to a day or two when I
have
had a hardware problem.
I also use my laptop as my personal computer, and I enjoy the MacOS
ecosystem such as iPhoto, mirroring to the AppleTV, the couple games I
may
play, or anything else I may want to do.
Some questions:
- How much has OS X changed over the past several versions? Is
something
from 5 years ago obsolete? Linux, on the other hand, is free. Any current
Linux distro will work very well on a 5-year-old PC, and there are even
some Linux distros (like Puppy Linux and antiX Linux) that work well on PCs
that are 10 or more years old.
2. Is it just me, or are used Macs so exorbitantly expensive as to defeat
the point of buying a used computer in the first place?
OS X has changed significantly over the years, but the big change was
going from 10.6 to 10.7, when Rosetta (the ability to run PowerPC code)
was
dropped. The latest OS (10.9) is free, and will run on any 64-bit
machine,
a Core 2 Duo or newer. You can get decent performance for things like
email and web browsing (and probably Rails development) out of an old
Core
2 Duo MacBook if you swap in an SSD, but the reality is you will still
pay
a fair amount for a machine that is 3-5 years old and while the MacBooks
and the unibody MacBook Pros are extremely reliable in my experience,
things will eventually starting going bad.
Also, the “iOS-ification” of MacOS past 10.6 is just BS tossed around by
people that don’t even really use MacOS anymore. Sure, they added the
ability to view apps in an iOS-like view, but it’s not the default, you
have to go find it. The overall UI doesn’t look much different than it
ever has. All the old keyboard shortcuts still work. Bringing gestures
support from iOS for trackpads (zooming/scrolling/rotation/etc) is a
good
thing, it is a natural interaction that makes sense. There has not been
any
functionality removed that I know of in this supposed “iOS-ification”
(except the ability to run PowerPC code from 10+ years ago). From a
frameworks point of view, iOS does tend to get more new APIs ahead of
MacOS, so it is often nice when they are ported to the MacOS frameworks
as
well. Now that OS releases are on yearly schedules for both platforms
there is much more parity between the frameworks.
Jim
