Devs use macs because they are rich and therefore get to use Unix.
Sysadmins, on the other hand, are poor so we have to use handmedown unix aka Linux, which we actually have to install, typically on our own burner machines, because I'll be damned if I have to use a machine where I can't ssh off the same terminal that I grep my filesystem with.
The good news is we have many different flavors of spam to choose from instead only one jolly rancher.
Have a nice weekend!
People in this tread keep referring to Linux as a sort of Unix. Let me disabuse you of that notion.
Linux is a bit like if a homeless man with a functional, but not conceptually complete understanding of Unix wrote a kernel in the midst of a severe fever dream, and never fixed the surreal flights from sanity that that initial bout of diseased, manic creativity produced.
Linux is not Unix. It's much closer to Unix than Windows, but it isn't Unix.
How would your poetically describe AIX?
I'm only human; absolutely nothing about AIX is poetic.
POSIX compliant, if you want to be technical about it.
I just don't see how Linux can even be compared to Mac. Even if you can do some things natively like CLI, it doesn't even come anywhere close to what Linux can do. The biggest difference for me is that Linux is open source. The more I've used open source software in my life, the more I've realized how inferior every other method of development is. Another one is control over your PC and customization. Mac simply doesn't give you control over your own hardware. It makes it easy to use with a pretty GUI, but a the cost of being locked in a proprietary spyware cage. Apologies if what I say is harsh, but I really don't believe Mac has done anything good for PCs in the long run other than lock them down and lower people's standards by babying them in to an ecosystem with jacked up prices, where the user ends up at the mercy of apple and what THEY decide is good for you. Not to mention just having to trust their word that they don't sell your data and allow backdoors to remain open for the FBI. I believe that the reason why many people find Linux hard to understand is because of how Microsoft and apple have designed their operating systems differently. Its like learning to drive with an automatic transmission and then switching to a stick shift. Its intimidating and different at first, but you eventually realize it gives you more control over how your car shifts and how much gas it uses.
Unix is great. To bad I've never got terminal time on a real unix box. I guess I installed bsd and ran that so it has some real honest bell lab source code it it somewhere.
But knockoff unix isn't bad - the gnu tools kick ass and it's stable- bash > sh - imo, plus the non posix tools I like better.
I'm just being fractious. You know I got luv for the penguin and know that Grace Hopper invented the unix kernel at Netscape and that RMS invented the troll. 
I'm doing a C++ class right now and X code works pretty good for it. I think VS works better personally though. A lot of the people in my class that are trying to be programmers are using macs. Never thought about it till this thread and now it's bugging me a little. I must know now.
I did my C++ course with a System76 laptop running Arch linux.
I was surround by a sea of Mac's and one fuckhead brought an iPad.
I think I was like 1 of maybe 3 people in the entire class to actually run linux as my main.
Exactly the same thing happened when I was at University. I was running Linux on a Dell laptop, everyone else was using either a Mac or a an iPad.
Apple also gives out education subsidies on a scale no other HW brand does to my knowledge.
Probably because they're the only ones with the margin to, but it could explain the dominance in Uni environments.
Nice! Similar boat here. I used Ubuntu in run level 3, wrote my C++ in vim and creates my own make files while everyone else was using VS.
Best time, ever!
Not all of them use MAC. I have been in places with just Windows or MAC systems and others that have a mix of both.
It depends on what they do. The place you were in does web and mobile Apps and that typically works better in a OSX environment.
I don't think the devs even know why they use macs other than "well they use them over there I should too!". I really really hate xcode. Like with a burning passion. If I don't have eclipse, nano, and a couple memory readers, I may well start killing people. I know, its all in ports, blah blah blah, but its never stable! None of it works like I need it to. The only viable options are visual studio code, which is convenient for building scripts but I don't like it much, and xcode, which is a tedious little fuck.
I recently found gnome-builder which is amazing. Its basically notepad++ with an IDE glued to the back. I love it. But fuck me if that ever gets into the OSX ports. At that OSX has shit hardware utilization. It constantly throttles everything so you don't get anything better than 2009 netbook performance out of anything. The only hardware from apple that hasn't done that to me was my ibook. It had a real heatsink and a real fan! It may have been old as fuck, but at least it fucking worked. I went to an apple store recently to try out some macbooks for some stuff I want to do and every time I tried to use my tools either OSX 12 freaked the fuck out and crashed amazingly, or it said that it was a PPC app or that it needed a different version of OSX. You fucking what?
Theres other OSX IDE's, sure, but I really don't want to waste wy time with them. I know my linux tooling better than I know how to use the task bar in windows 2000, so why the fuck should I bother.
Sorry for the rant, I just hate using OSX to dev anything. Give me a macbook with the governor taken off and Arch Linux and I'll do whatever the fuck you want.
Maybe there making some software for Mac that needs Mac's/Apple products to test/run on or for there aesthetic's
Because all the Thinkpads are already taken by IT and engineers.
haha thinkpads may deserve their own thread
source: I run a software development company.
Not in standard Comp Sci classes where you learn C/C++. That shit runs on anything.
moded x230, I'll never need another laptop.