Why I use a MacBookPro and OS X

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2016 03 01 head

I loved Linux as a young developer. I compiled new kernels during evening sessions. I worked hard to install and configure drivers to support the hardware I had bought.

I explored forums and talked with technical support specialists to activate hardware or support the resolution of my display. I struggled for days to have the correct drivers for the graphic card and communication components of my notebook.

I grew older and decided to enjoy my evenings and weekends with my family and friends. Surely I would prefer to have no virus, trojan, and other evils in my workstation.

So I went to macOS and Apple notebooks without regrets.

Gains

The major gains upon migrating to OS X are:

  • No virus scanners are necessary, the speed-up during complex programming and development activities is tremendous.

  • No trouble when updating the operating system, updates are automatic, and often no new start is required.

  • Unix Command Line and Tools are available in the console. Homebrew or MacPorts projects provide all known and less-known utilities and programs available under Linux [1].

  • A long-lived notebook is still working and looking nice after five years of daily usage. The performance is more than adequate for software development with Java 8/9/10/11 stack and C++.

The last notebooks I had all lasted between six and nine years. These computers were used daily for the first five years.

Daily Development

The tools I really enjoy and use on a daily basis for software development as I mainly developed in Java - are:

  • IntelliJ IDEA IDE,

  • Atlassian Cloud applications based on BitBucket, HipChat, CI pipeline,

  • Homebrew as the package manager for utilities,

  • Docker as the container manager,

  • VirtualBox when I need a full-fledged virtual machine [2].

Daily Work

The tools I use to perform administrative work are:

  • LibreOffice,

  • Google Business for team work in the cloud using collaborative tools,

  • Apple Mail Client with GPG plugin for PGP and S/MIME secure email,

  • A local Swiss application Banana for accounting and VAT reports for the federal government. I bought it as soon as the company stopped requesting higher prices for OS X than for the other platforms.

LibreOffice completely replaced Microsoft Office suite. I stopped using OpenOffice after the strange behavior of Oracle with the application.

I never really regretted leaving Linux or Ubuntu behind me.

1. I currently use Homebrew. The available packages and the handling are excellent.
2. The need for virtual machines for daily work is fading away.