Should I buy a Mac Book Pro for Web Development? But I like Windows 10?
Introduction
Based on my infield experience, of working on a Windows 10 in the office, but a Mac Book Pro at home, I’ve listed some takeaway tips and info on the reasons I justified owning a Mac Book Pro, as much as I love Windows. Take note that I am a front-end junior web developer at the time I am writing this post.
Front-end Web Development
As I’m a Node.js-oriented web developer — the tools I currently have on my belt are:
OS X
- VS Code (it runs quick here and looks awesome)
- Local by Flywheel (easily provision WordPress environments, free!)
- Hyper.js (a command line run on JavaScript inc. plugins — why not?)
- Adobe CC (Photoshop, Illustrator, Experience Design, Premiere Pro)
- Airmail 3 (an amazing email client for Mac, worth my 9 bucks)
- Hammerspoon (easily move the windows around at different sizes, open-source!)
- Kap (a high quality gif screencast/capture, open-source, and amazing collaborators!)
Windows 10
- VS Code (with a great material theme + community plugins!)
- Adobe CC (same as above)
- Microsoft Office (great suite of apps Word, Excel, Outlook — choose the theme ‘minimal’, it’s modern!)
- LICEcap screencast gifs
- Laragon (an isolated development environment!)
The surrounding myths of Microsoft and to avoid it especially as a web developer are no longer true. Microsoft is adapting to new technology (they’re thriving in 2017) and even bought a few other companies, like LinkedIn (which too bought a smaller company Lynda.com). Microsoft has great products like the Surface Pros, and HoloLens.
With that said, I am aware that people do have a bias on using Windows for web development, but Microsoft is doing their best to get past the mistakes they have caused with Internet Explorer, Active X, among others.
You might want to have a read on the personal experience of ShopTalk Show’s Dave Rupert with going all Windows 10 (he’s normally a Mac user) for 1 year.
Unix-based vs Unix-like
What justifies my decision to purchase a Mac Book Pro includes an actual unix-based environment. I have been a user of Ubuntu for a few months during my transition to a unix-based environment coming from MS-DOS, and noticed that development was much faster when you work with Node.js often.
Using Windows 10 with Node.js, I have seen that it takes an extra half a minute or so for me to run gulp compared to OS X where it is instant. I have looked for solutions around the internet like whitelisting from my Anti-virus my Development directory and where Node.js resides, or running certain configurations, but it’s only gone down to 10 seconds. I use cygwin as a git-friendly command line on Windows to save me time to get down to business with pushing commits.
Please contact me if you have found a way to speed up the command line execution on Windows 10’s git-friendly command line apps like cygwin — I’d be more than glad!
Other than this, Windows 10 as a development environment would have been a cinch.
Feel more productive
In general, I have noticed that owning a Mac Book Pro seems to be something special for me. It was my dream since childhood to at least be in the presence of an Apple device, as back in my childhood I considered it a prized possession.
In fact, owning a Mac Book Pro now is a prized possession for me — one that I have to treasure and make sure that it is thoroughly used up. Every time I use this Mac Book Pro, I get a vision that the craft put into this perfection along with Don Norman (who coined the term UX!) Apple director at The Design Lab, and a whole team of individuals formed together a great device to be used by a human. It’s a comfortable laptop, and in turn reflects the amount of work I put into it.
It’s when you use a device as pricy as this that you have to ask questions to yourself like ‘what impact have I created towards others today?’, and ‘how can I become more productive, to better enjoy family and work, and work fewer hours too?’.
It’s these kinds of questions that disrupt the industry, and over-all provide you a sense of fulfilment as an individual.
Safe from insecurities by nature
The plan from the very start of the Mac Book was to keep it secure.
That meant totally removing support for old OS X software, so that you keep yourself secure from any past threats, and making sure that good software is maintained and updated software, easily weeding out the software developers who can’t keep up with compatibility.
I have found a great post on Quora by Phillip Remaker on why OS X is secure, but the question has been flipped around by him. A must read!
Final Thoughts
The bottom line is that if you can purchase a Mac Book Pro and have been yearning to own one, then you should just go for it.
The same way as if you would own a Windows 10 and are not sure if you should choose the £799 or the £1249 price tag, as much as you love the specifications and features of the slightly more expensive one but just can not afford it for the time being, I would high recommend as much as possible to get the more expensive one; just work hard a little longer for it, that’s all. Because that has been termed as your prized possession, and you will only live in regret having not purchased the slightly more expensive one.
This leaves us with a gold moral: no regrets! #noragrets ✌️
Images: Web Development, Spilling Coffee