[max_]

Most of the developers that build web/dev tools(@ Google, FB, Dropbox etc), cater so much for the Mac & linux. They neglect windows.

Just make sure you are not on Windows. For example I am on windows and have failed to start using Tensorflow because its developers (Google guys) claim the build system they use (Guava) does not support windows.

[tristanj]

Exactly this. Apple hardware might be nice, but the reason developers use OSX/Linux is for the software ecosystem. A lot of really useful tools do not work properly on Windows. And when they do, the supporting documentation, tutorials, and stackoverflow answers are lacking on Windows.

An example: A few years ago, the guide to install Django on Windows was a three-page tutorial, but for OSX all you had to do was run a single script. It was clear the devs had put much more effort optimizing and simplifying the OSX route vs the Windows one.

I used to use Windows for dev but after two years of getting annoyed when people kept recommending tools that only work on *nix, I bought a mac and don't regret that decision.

[DrScump]

But if the issue is O/S rather than CPU, why not run *nix in a VM, or dual-boot Linux/Windows if you have to?

[tristanj]

I did that for a few weeks, then stopped because it's so much hassle. Using a VM is very clunky, a lot of features don't work as expected. There is the perpetual mouse lag, copy/paste is very confusing (different hotkeys for the the host and VM), transferring content from the host to VM doesn't always work, plus filesystem annoyances. It's not something people want to deal with all the time.

Dual-booting was out of the question, because restarting the computer just to run Microsoft Word never made much sense to me.

[sauere]

comfort