Yesterday, I’ve read a blog post on Dev.to, together with a healthy debate that appeared there in the comments. It was about Macs, their pricing, and how you might not need one for your work that in this case involves web development.

Now, reading this made me think about why Macs are so popular within the web development community. I feel like it’s somewhat of an unspoken truth. I see tons of GitHub issues reported from Macs, benchmarks run on Macs, Mac-recommended setups, tutorials, and all that kind of stuff. Sure, Linux and even Windows have user-bases of their own, but it seems that - in web development at least - Macs are the generally-preferred option (if you’re willing to pay the price that it).

I haven’t yet owned a Mac myself, and my primary OS is Linux, with some Windows here and there for specific tasks. However, I have played a little bit with macOS and more than enough with both Linux and Windows to know what’s so appealing about it and how it compares to the other options. And so, here are 3 reasons why I think web developers prefer Macs.

Based on Unix

One of the biggest advantages of macOS for all kinds of developers is the fact that it’s based on Unix. This means that you get a comfortable terminal with all the convenient and well-established commands, together with a vast ecosystem of development-centric tools.

Now, an argument can be made that it’s only an advantage when compared to Windows (which without the WSL lack pretty hard in this regard), but not so for Linux. Arguably, Linux is even better for various development tasks, due to it being more lightweight and literally omnipresent when it comes to servers, databases, or even supercomputers. It’s also more customizable than macOS and has an even larger ecosystem of useful software.

Overall, while Linux is definitely the king in the Unix-like category, macOS is close behind and surely far ahead of Windows. Also, it’s somewhat of a matter of personal preference as some might prefer the customizability of Linux, while others the out-of-the-box intuitiveness of macOS.

Creative software support

While coding is the biggest part of the job, it can be said that web development goes far beyond that. Because of the visual part of the website, web app, or even native JavaScript app (Electron, React Native, etc.), there’s often a need for web developers to do some graphic tinkering - vector illustrations, logos, icons, images, and maybe even promotional videos too! Remember, there are many freelancers in this field providing “all-in-one services”, so everything is possible!

#software #watercooler