Be part of JetBrains PHPverse 2026 on June 9 – a free online event bringing PHP devs worldwide together.
@toniperic Yeah, my GPU was half that alone :P two 27" LCD... the list goes on. Macs are just so built to last, quiet, portable, work with Linux (as in networking and sharing). Blahblah all good stuff.
I tripled the amount of work I do in a year compared to Windows. Probably Linux is the same but I think the keyboard helps a lot. Using that command key where Alt is... jeez it's faster.
@alenabdula Yeah I guess.. It was only a months wage so it was worth it!
@bashy I suppose you're a gamer. My GPU is just a decent one. :)
Nevertheless you can get all that stuff using Windows or Linux, using some alternative software, so I still don't see why Macbook would increase my productivity and therefore don't see the reason to pay lots of money to get one. Not trolling, still just curious.
@toniperic Yeah, play a lot of graphical games like Battlefield 4, Far Cry 4 etc.
Well, you CAN do it on any OS but there's easier ways to do things and better software to use. Time is everything.
Time is everything
x1000
Windows is the best for games, simple as. Mac next then Linux. Running things under Wine for example is troublesome. If you have the time to play about with it then you can make it work and even then you need to live with issues along the way.
As a basic surfing, development box I would say Linux would win.
As the in between that runs most popular games, office products and does pretty much everything else you need, it's the Mac.
As @bashy said, time is everything.
Yeah if you need Photoshop, PHP IDE, VM running for dev work, clients to connect to MySQL, SSH, some productivity apps and a nice GUI, Mac will do all that.
Personally, if you don't have the money, build a Hackintosh!
@bashy not every PC spec can run Hackintosh.
That's why you need to build a "Hackintosh"
http://lifehacker.com/the-always-up-to-date-guide-to-building-a-hackintosh-o-5841604
There are some pretty nice setups you could have.
Pretty much just need an Intel based system, UEFI BIOS and done. Enjoy :P
If you can follow along with @JeffreyWay on the new Eager Loading is a Beast video and your eyes don't bleed then building a Hackintosh should be cake! If like me you're completely baffled you could still successfully build a nice Hackintosh without losing to much hair! ;-)
I use windows and mac (mac laptop, windows desktop), and I find that I like working on the mac better. This is weird because I only got the mac because it is a work computer but now I find it quite convenient because it is built on unix and the terminal is much more useful.
Okay guys, so I've finally bought my own Mac Mini that is supposed to arrive at Monday. It's some late-2011 Mac Mini with 2 gigs of RAM and some dual-core processor running 10.9.2 I think. Not a beast, but it's what I could get at the moment. Doesn't even have a HDMI port but rather I'm gonna have to buy a miniDVI-to-HDMI cable. Not intended to use for gaming anyways, @bashy ;)
Is there a way I can install Yosemite or there are restrictions? If so, how can I check out what's the most recent OSX version I can install on it?
Any tips on what software should I check out? Any fast-introduction to OSX world? Get latest goodies locally or just go with Vagrant+Homestead? To be honest, I love how Sequel Pro looks, can't wait to run that app!
So excited, I bet it will take ages until Monday arrives!
The perfect Windows PC for PHP development has this software:
You don't need anything more than that.
Use chocolatey to install software like virtualbox, vagrant, git PHP. Then setup homestead vm and use TE or IDE for coding. Cmder is the best shell for Windows. It comes with ssh, git and has a lot of linux commands. As you use the terminal on Linux you can use Cmder; the commands are the same.;and you can also install it using chocolatey.
One thing that I did not like on Windows is the terminal. But since I discovered Cmder I fell in love.
@toniperic Do not game on a Mac! The architecture is not built for that :)
Never said I would. I don't game at all!
@toniperic Yeah, it was more of a "towards anyone" comment :)
I use Windows because it's what is on my PC and I've been too lazy or just afraid I'll miss my Windows for some reason to wipe it and install Linux. I keep telling myself I'll get another PC and make it Linux. Linux is awesome and everything just works but my PC is too slow for a VM so I keep falling back to just using Windows.
My main issue with Windows is that many times I've had a issue with open source software that provides a Windows version but when reporting the issue it takes for ever for the developer to find a solution because they don't have a Windows PC to re-create the issue on. I don't expect them to go out and buy Windows just to fix my issue but it's kind of irritating and makes me wonder how they made a Windows version in the first place if they have no way of testing and fixing issues on a Windows version. Just say up front that you don't really support Windows.
I have an i7 3770K + GT640 hackintosh and I've been running Mountain Lion with absolutely zero issues since mid 2012. I paid less than 900 dollars for the computer and since I don't have an urge to update every other day, its still pretty powerful. I can run two VM's plus Photoshop + Illustrator + Chrome and it doesn't even notices it.
For those that feel that Windows is not suitable for your dev requirements, try Hackintosh. I would never ever pay for a Mac Desktop again, I feel that would be the closest thing to throwing my money away, however I would maybe buy a Macbook because it's hard to find a notebook that's Hackintosh ready.
Hackintosh is obviously a great option. I wouldn't buy an iMac myself but I'd build a Hackintosh and buy a 4k display.
I just prefer MacBook Pros to any other laptop (even if it had OSX on). The build quality of MBPs is great and they're smaller than most.
I switch into Ubuntu recently. I'm tired of Windows. Cli in windows are bad. And when it come to ssh, vagrant, it's a bit of mess
I still prefer Windows for day-to-day use, but for development, I finally build a hackintosh for 3 reasons:
B. Font rendering. Apple is just hands down better at this than anyone else currently.
III. Xdebug. I could never get it to work on my VMs under Windows, and it's one of the best tools ever to help fix things that are broken.
I've done extensive development on Windows, Ubuntu, and Mac, and they're all piles of shit. All of them.
Windows
Lack of a native Unix terminal for generating keys, SSH'ing and many other features is a huge deal breaker. You can get almost anything to work, but it's a lot of effort.
However, as an OS goes, Windows (7) wins hands down.
Also, Windows hardware is terrible. If you're deving on a PC, fine. But laptops? Pffff. Macbook Pro simply is king. Anything else with similar specs will come at similar cost, but won't have anywhere near the fit, finish, polish, and attention to detail as a Macbook Pro.
Ubuntu/Debian
Best terminal environment to do development on. Apt-get kicks Brew's ass in terms of consistency and simplicity. Shit installed through Brew seems to be totally scatterbrained.
But as an OS? It's awful. Memory leaks all over the place, frequent crashes, can't run Photoshop easily, and multi-monitor support is wonky at best.
Ubuntu on Laptops is also a game of Russian Roulette - better pray that the laptop's hardware has proper driver support in Ubuntu or you're going to be doing a lot of searching/compiling.
Mac
Ok terminal environment. Needs Brew, which isn't ideal. Also have to remember to manually do things like make mysql automatically start when the computer is rebooted. But it's a Unix shell, so there should be no problem doing anything you need from command line.
As an OS though? Awful. The simplest thing - window management - is a pain in the ass. Maybe it's 20+ years of Windows conventions, but OSX's window management is very unintuitive. Close and minimize are the same thing in Yosemite.
Maximize completely clobbers everything else on the screen, requiring you to slosh through desktops to get to windows or constantly flick through Expose. Move your mouse near the top of the screen to click something, and you might accidentally trigger the menu bar to drop down and cover the thing that you wanted to click on.
Also, if I have a maximized window on my 3rd monitor, but then go over to my Laptop's monitor and open up the Settings panel there, it will switch desktops on my 3rd monitor even though the window opens up on a totally different monitor/desktop. When I close settings, I have to go back to my 3rd monitor and manually swipe back to the desktop that contains the full screen window.
WAY too many battery sucking animations for maximizing and sliding and switching between desktops.
Multimonitor works ok, except for when I accidentally reconnect my monitors in the wrong order without the correct number of desktops available on each, and Mac just totally re-arranges which monitors my applications open on. I normally have code on my middle monitor, and browser on my right monitor. 80% of the time, it's correct. The other 20% of the time, Sublime will open on my laptop's monitor instead of the middle monitor, and I have to manually re-assign it.
Double clicking the menu bar ALSO minimizes the window, even though we already have two small pips to do that already. Why not pseudo-maximize like Windows? (patents/licensing? Pony up Apple, you're worth $150 billion....).
Snap to screen edge requires a 3rd party application to be installed. I always distrustful of the need to install 3rd party stuff. Sometimes they cause really obscure bugs and overall, decrease the stability of your system.
Scroll wheel direction and trackpad scrolling are linked together, even though the setting appears to be separately defined. I like the "Natural Direction" for the trackpad when I'm using just the laptop, but when I plug a mouse in, I like the scroll wheel to use the normal reverse direction, because of 20+ years of that ingrained behavior that I don't feel like changing. Again, splitting those two things requires that I install another 3rd party program to do so.
I own two iPads and have owned iPhones since the 3G, and I love them. But the only thing I love about my Macbook Pro is the hardware itself, OSX sucks except for its Unix shell, and even then, I would prefer a Debian flavored shell.
So give me:
Macbook Pro, with Windows 7 as the OS, and a Debian terminal/shell, and I'll be happy as a pig in shit.
Macbook Pro, with Windows 7 as the OS, and a Debian terminal/shell, and I'll be happy as a pig in shit.
Doesn't make sense.
I spent decades on Windows and made the switch to Linux (Mint) last year. After a 3 month adjustment period I love Linux Mint.
I have a pet hatred against Apple for development. 90% of ISP do not run on Apple, but rather Linux. Apple OS ( Free BSD) is not compatible with Debian Linux. None of the tools a developer needs runs on Apple OS. So, you end up in this absurd situation where you buy an Apple because it is pretty. Then you have to put an emulation layer on it so that you can run Linux (Ubuntu/Mint) on it. All the apparent benefits of Apple are gone. Crazy.
My recommendation is forget Apple, go straight to Linux (Ubuntu or Mint) and get on with it. You will not have to mess around with emulation layers like Homestead and all that stuff ... you run all the dev tools straight on Linux - clean and simple. And BTW Linux Mint has a windows like interface, which you can change for an Apple like interface. Ubuntu also has a great interface ( Unity ).
Edit - I can't relate to anything which Tag says in his post above. I run 3x 24 inch screens no problem off a Radeon graphics card. For uniquely Windows apps like Photoshop I have set up a VM for Win7. It runs FASTER, on Linux than natively and runs PhotoShop, or VideoEditiing all no problem.
Memory leaks ?? Mint runs faster than Win7 and I don't reboot for days and days. Never ever had a problem with driver support except for a 5 year old Dell printer.
@vincej They're not the same but you can install anything that you can on Linux on OS X. What couldn't you run?
Ubuntu also has a great interface ( Unity )
Unity ran like dogshit on my old machine (and my colleague's machine) - I had to switch to Gnome. If I hit the start key to open up Unity app search by accident, I would have to wait ~10 seconds for it to open, and then after I closed it, the entire machine ran slower - as if it was trying to do some find * operation in the background.
Also, Unity would frequently use track of the menu bar for an application when you went full screen. I had to do a lot of process killing to close windows...
I had an i5 dual core, w/4gigs of RAM. I don't know what GPU it used (was my work computer), but it was a horrendous experience.
@tag Hi - Maybe I'm lucky. I run Mint 17.1 ( built off of Ubuntu 14LTS) on my desktop: Dell 8300 2nd gen i7, 16GB RAM, 250GB SSD where I have Mint and Win7 loaded. Runs fast as lighting. Boots from cold in 10 secs. Ok, Linux Chrome is not as good as Win7 Chrome.
BTW - one of your recent posts on arrays was very helpful, thanks !
@bashy - Unless I am very mistaken (a big possibilty ! ) apps built for Debian Linux ( ie Ubuntu and Mint ) will not run on Fedora( RedHat) or OSX( BSD), unless you put a vm on top of those OS's. Wrong?
Well, it depends on what apps you're talking about but most things you can compile on Linux, you can compile on Unix.
This is what I use
Why would I bought a Mac?
@mabasic yeah I love cmder too, feels right and looks nice. I actually didn't know about chocolatey. Thanks for sharing!
Please or to participate in this conversation.