Sounds like the guy wasn't really the Mac target audience in the first place. It just kind of worked for him on the Unix side of things and all the bells and whistles we justify the steep pricing by were merely "things he is now glad to never have to deal with again".
Professionals were Apples target a long time ago, but they just switched over to the mainstream and keeping a lot of professionals that was in the earlier segment. Year over year the Mac is dumbed down to protect the user from doing something stupid, but not really thinking about the people that don't want to be cushioned. It's great HW though.
You're forgetting professionals are also human. I don't consider lowering the chances or shooting yourself in the foot a negative. And if you're 'that' professional it should not be a problem to switch a few configuration options.
There has never, ever, ever been a time where most developers bought Macs. Ever.
The vast majority of software developers have always been on Windows. This is true worldwide and in the US. Only in certain fields and places like Silicon Valley do developers on Macs outnumber those on Windows.
I can link some numbers for you but they are findable. The stackoverflow developer survey shows it year after year.
As a matter of fact, you can see here [0] that 72.4% of the 57k developers who took the survey primarily use Windows or Linux over a Mac. This is certainly in line with general desktop OS market share statistics [1] showing that Macs are only used by about 17% of the general population world wide with Windows taking the lion's share.
Perhaps I've offended someones feelings with these statistics. Sorry, I can't apologize for facts though.
I guess most will start with MacOs because they do frontend work and for anyone who does design work macs just provide the best out of the box experience. Then later you evolve to full stack dev and find out that because OS X is based on unix, you can do it all on the same machine.
Having some useful console tools certainly pulled a lot of people from Linux to macOS. The macOS GUI at least delivers a working desktop where "Linux on the desktop" seems to be eternally 'around the corner' for the last decade or something like that.
What is the Mac target audience if not "professional creatives" though (which got a late huge influx of developers who wanted a "UNIX machine that just works" when Apple switched from MacOS to OSX, and those are also the first to leave now). Maybe the market in the US is very different, but in Europe the Mac always used to be a "professional tool" for creating things. The way OSX/macOS has been going in the last decade alienates many of those users.
I struggle to see the point in that strategy. We're at a point where the 'average user' doesn't need a computer, since even cheap noname mobile phone are good enough for most things now. Why turn the Mac into an oversized mobile phone? This won't attract any new users who are happy with their phone, it just will drive away the people who bought a computer because it lets them do stuff that's not possible on a phone.
PS: My comment reads a bit snobbish, which wasn't my intention. I do believe that no actual "average user" (or "homogeneous" target audience) exists in the real world. Thus it doesn't make sense to create a single setup which targets such an "average user". Options, customization and (for some people at least) being able to poke into the guts of the system are important, and that's what Apple is taking away on macOS, and that's what makes macOS more and more unattractive.
Comments
Sounds like the guy wasn't really the Mac target audience in the first place. It just kind of worked for him on the Unix side of things and all the bells and whistles we justify the steep pricing by were merely "things he is now glad to never have to deal with again".
Professionals were Apples target a long time ago, but they just switched over to the mainstream and keeping a lot of professionals that was in the earlier segment. Year over year the Mac is dumbed down to protect the user from doing something stupid, but not really thinking about the people that don't want to be cushioned. It's great HW though.
You're forgetting professionals are also human. I don't consider lowering the chances or shooting yourself in the foot a negative. And if you're 'that' professional it should not be a problem to switch a few configuration options.
But isn't that why most developers buy Macbooks? Because it is Unix underneath?
In a related note, I see Windows being adopted more as they keep improving WSL2.
There has never, ever, ever been a time where most developers bought Macs. Ever.
The vast majority of software developers have always been on Windows. This is true worldwide and in the US. Only in certain fields and places like Silicon Valley do developers on Macs outnumber those on Windows.
I can link some numbers for you but they are findable. The stackoverflow developer survey shows it year after year.
As a matter of fact, you can see here [0] that 72.4% of the 57k developers who took the survey primarily use Windows or Linux over a Mac. This is certainly in line with general desktop OS market share statistics [1] showing that Macs are only used by about 17% of the general population world wide with Windows taking the lion's share.
Perhaps I've offended someones feelings with these statistics. Sorry, I can't apologize for facts though.
[0] https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020#technology-de...
[1] https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide
I guess most will start with MacOs because they do frontend work and for anyone who does design work macs just provide the best out of the box experience. Then later you evolve to full stack dev and find out that because OS X is based on unix, you can do it all on the same machine.
Absolutely, but this guy didn't need Unix "underneath", he just needed Unix without the pretty and expensive UI on top of it.
Having some useful console tools certainly pulled a lot of people from Linux to macOS. The macOS GUI at least delivers a working desktop where "Linux on the desktop" seems to be eternally 'around the corner' for the last decade or something like that.
Yes, that's what I mean. Unix underneath + a better UI interface is essentially what MacOS offers.
What is the Mac target audience if not "professional creatives" though (which got a late huge influx of developers who wanted a "UNIX machine that just works" when Apple switched from MacOS to OSX, and those are also the first to leave now). Maybe the market in the US is very different, but in Europe the Mac always used to be a "professional tool" for creating things. The way OSX/macOS has been going in the last decade alienates many of those users.
I struggle to see the point in that strategy. We're at a point where the 'average user' doesn't need a computer, since even cheap noname mobile phone are good enough for most things now. Why turn the Mac into an oversized mobile phone? This won't attract any new users who are happy with their phone, it just will drive away the people who bought a computer because it lets them do stuff that's not possible on a phone.
PS: My comment reads a bit snobbish, which wasn't my intention. I do believe that no actual "average user" (or "homogeneous" target audience) exists in the real world. Thus it doesn't make sense to create a single setup which targets such an "average user". Options, customization and (for some people at least) being able to poke into the guts of the system are important, and that's what Apple is taking away on macOS, and that's what makes macOS more and more unattractive.