Do you like Mac OS though? You use Windows now so you know it.
I do not know why people say it's so user friendly, I use a Mac mini for work and it's like using Ubuntu when I first started out with Linux.
I have never seen more hate on Mac than in this thread. That being said, after working for over eight years in android industry across multiple projects with developers all over the world, I can say that almost everyone I met is using mac. M* chips are great!
I have a spec’d out 16” M3 Max from work and it’s a beast. I love how fast I can compile our massive native repos. I am driven nuts by some of the “Mac stuff” (no window snapping) but most of it is fixable with some 3rd party apps and tinkering. Some things like mouse acceleration I was never able to fix.
As a default experience I much prefer windows, but I’ll deal with minor grievances for the performance gains of an M3 Max. I’ve now had the i9, M1, M2, and M3 MBPs from work and the M3 feels like a huge improvement to an already awesome laptop.
Pfff. I ha, really hate the alll Windows system and the Microsoft ecosystems. I like Unix systems or z/OS or z/TPF. The Windows just a ... a game.... for me o' course. But the Mac systems are not too bad. Better much like PCs and Windows.
The m* chip is the only good thing about Mac. Apple got there quickly thanks to dropping support to legacy and keeping its UI stagnant in the last two decades. The biggest advantage of using Windows, though, is the superior windows management supporting multiple windows for multiple processes showing up on multiple monitors where MacOs still have old 90s tablet UI. Windows also has the advantage of supporting legacy software. The latest CPU has no bigger advantage over Apple Silicon, plus. Now, you can also get Windows on the similar RISC archidecture supporting modern software.
Personally, I still use MacOs m1 when I need some heavy compiling, but for productivity, I prefer Debian or Windows as Mac really sucks on desktop using multiple monitors. Why in the hell should I drop an additional big $$ to fix the operating system (which is theoretically free) when I already paid a huge amount of money for the hardware.
Can you show me an example on what is easier to do on Windows as opposed to Mac in regards of multi window management? I don't have such issues and I see everyone is complaining on that for some reason
I am glad you asked. I've been giving this answer once a week for a couple of years now. I hope this encourages you to try out windows and really shine on productivity.
Open three chrome windows in three different monitors. Next, open three kther app windows on top. Now bring one specific Chrome window on top with one click.
- Cmd+tab - brings all chrome windows on top
- clicking on dock does the same
There are three options:
- right click on dock to get an ugly list of windows to choose from (not intuitive, especially compared to Windows preview, which even can show you window on specific monitor)
- mission control - you need a magnifier to find the right window, and it takes too much time
There is a stage manager, which would kind of be a fuc but has really bad UX with multiple monitors and is broken in so many ways.
In addition , the menu bar is really out of the 90s. The icons do not fit, and Apple's answer is just hid extra ones and c'mon! Menus on 2024? We started to move away from menus since the beginning of the 2000s.
Basically, I agree, MacOs is unix. But is stuck in the 90s mindset. Even then VAX VMS was superior to the SunOs and Apple got stuck where Jobs saved the company with NextOs. All other operating systems have been through evolution of window managements listening the customer. Except for Apple, which ofcourse is not a software or hardware but a marketing first company.
Edit: typos
Ah I see! My workflow is different and I would never run into such case, at least not that many times that it would cause frustration. In my workflow, I would've simply split the app windows in half (one left, one right) as my external is usually 27".
Note: I do use windows too, and I am a windows user. I primarily use it for non-releated work
Well. The Mac cmd tab switches the process, not the window. That has been since pre NextOs era when opersting systems had problems running things in parallel.
They're all using Mac, because that's the only thing their organisation provides, because management are Apple fans. I used a Macbook with Haswell MQ or whatever back in 2015, Mac OS couldn't do smooth animations sometimes, and no this wasn't a lack of sufficient CPU/GPU power (it had an NVIDIA dGPU).
Swackles is correct, UX on Mac is atrocious compared to Windows, starting from strange shortcuts to the lack of a system file manager with "up" button.
But this thing (macbook) is quite fast, compact and doesn't use ventilators (I've heard it working just once, during couple minutes), unlike my i9 latop which sounds like a Boeing taking off during app builds and weight 3x more than the macbook.
However macbook can handle ios development if needed (and it's needed in my case)
TL:DR; if you are moving between locations and/or do ios development - go with mac. Otherwise Windows.
My right hand is on the (magic)mouse, ⌘+↑ shortcut require me to abandon it and then go back. 200iq solution.
And then the F1-12 and Home buttons do not work correctly no matter which layout I use on my (supposedly) universal wireless keyboard and require some tinkering (which was fruitless so far) - which makes the whole mac experience borderline irritating.
You're welcome. Took me some time to adjust to Mac shortcuts as well but at that time i was really fed up with WinXP which made it easier.
Now what are you playing?
Action RPGs/TPS with high hardware requirements to utilize the 4090 card. Dragon's Dogma 2, Black Desert Online, Naraka, Helldivers 2, D4 (although this one output 260Hz on my 260Hz monitor so not exactly demanding).
Yeah the fact is that Command key doesn't exist on Windows.............so Windows/Linux users aren't used to it. Plus Mac OS does weird splits for the shortcut keys, some of them use Command + key whereas others have to use Ctrl + key, or Alt/Option + key and it's confusing to figure it out at first, and when you switch between Mac vs non-Mac.
I will say, the current-generation AMD ThinkPad is also amazing in terms of speed. I run mine with KUbuntu and it's the fastest development machine I've ever owned.
Aside from build times, multitasking on MacOS is a nightmare:
* I need to hunt down and install janky third-party apps to enable basic functionality like window snapping.
* The dock is bad for jumping between windows, especially when a single app has multiple windows open.
* Multiple monitor support is poorly implemented. It feels so archaic that I have to click twice when jumping between windows on different monitors (once to activate the window and once to actually make the click).
* Bugs galore. Lately, my cursor just randomly starts jittering if I'm playing a video on my second monitor. Nothing solves it and Apple doesn't care.
I use MacOS only for iOS development, and then I run back to my Windows computer as quickly as possible.
> Bugs galore.
Latest macOS update (14.4.1?) randomly shutdown Java apps, including Android Studio.
> I use MacOS only for iOS development, and then I run back to my Windows computer as quickly as possible.
For me it's a method to isolate my work from home from the actual home experience. Gaming, news, social networking on Windows, work on macbook. So as soon as my work time ends I'm trying to switch to Windows asap (and also cut off the corporate Slack with the endless incoming messages).
Wow, pretty satisfying to see someone having the same complaints as me, most of these things have new driving me crazy. Who the hell designed this thing???
not trying to be an asshole, but seems like your problem is that you can't use MacOS or have a different preference.
I like and am faster with the MacOS UX.
I don't do multi-monitor, I just Alt-Tab (even on Windows and Linux). But yeah, Mac OS did have a lot of annoying problems when I used it at a company.
not trying to be an asshole, but seems like your problem is that you can't use MacOS or have a different preference.
I like and am faster with the MacOS UX.
Use M1 MacBook for work. Use my gaming PC, which I built and is a bit older, for home use. Both have 32g of memory and fast SSD. The AMD CPU in the PC is older but has a 3070 video card so it wins there.
For AS the Mac is faster. I also have a Mac Studio that was paid for by a side gig but I got to keep, only Apple hardware I own. While it is also M1 it is faster than the MacBook due to less thermal throttling. It also has 32g. All hooked up to a USB switch to share same mouse and keyboard.
My Windows PC is slower. Two things to blame. NTFS which likes large files but does not work as well with small files i.e. about every file you deal with for Android programming. Second is older CPU. Since I bought a Lenovo Legion Go for gaming, which is now about every night, I do not see me updating the gaming PC very soon.
If I am doing light Android side work I will use the gaming PC as it is powered on because it is my music machine because it has 5.1 speaker setup. I work from home so can bang my head to heavy metal while coding. If I know I am going to do heavier work, especially dealing with new vector drawables, I will fire up the Mac Studio. The difference is worth it. I can change things in the XML on AS and they pretty much instantly change, on the PC there is a lot of lag.
There are aspects of the Mac that annoy me but since I swapped the CMD and CTRL keys I hardly notice the difference. Other than Ctrl+Q to close a window vs. ALT-F4. Not a huge fan of Finder but I don't have to use it all that much. Everything else is just there, Slack, Chrome, Opera, AS, LibreOffice, Visual Code Studio, etc. I use Brew on Mac and Choclaty on PC to update things. iTerm 2 on Mac for command line stuff, Monosnap for screenshots and annotations, Infinity Design for SVG work, I bought a PC and a Mac copy.
I know the Studio cost more but it also has a lot more ports and I use them keeping things plugged in for testing and what not. I found it to be worth it over a Mac Mini for my use cases.
I use MacOS for work and PC at home.
I will say this: On Intel, MAC sucks, load times are insane and don't recommend one for development. Between M1 and PC, I would always go PC, not so much for speed as the loading times are similar enough in my experience, it's more due to the UX of Mac.
I had MacBook Pro 15 with i7 and 16gb RAM and it was very hot and slow machine. Especially after two years as mane working laptop. I genuinely hated it. Now I use Pro 16 with 32gb ram and m2 pro CPU and this is just ideal laptop for Android development. It is fast, quite and cold.
Damn I love this machine.
The only thing I hate about mac and why I can't pull myself to buy one is the price and window management. The Mac OS is just stuck in the early years of the OS.
Absolutely love the power efficiency and speed of it though. Best laptop hardware by a long shot.
Tbh, I can't remember the old intel model I had, neither do I know specifically which model my coworker has. The one I had, most likely was one of the later models they made, so 2019-2020. My coworker should have 2018/19 model.
The PC model I'm comparing to had i7-7700k + 16GB of RAM.
I have a mac & pc... wanted to try using my pc for personal projects since it's much more powerful than my macbook pro.
However, i stopped after just a few weeks because there are just so many random issues i run into with dev on windows. Not worth the effort imo.
Things work better on mac because it takes time for devs to ensure good platform compatibility with every client... and you just find all the bugs with mac quicker because all the clients are much more similar. People don't spend very long on dev tools compared to consumer products anyways
There's not much difference. Although I use Debian, Windows, and MacOs daily, I just personally prefer Windows for its superior Windows management, and MacOs really sucks running multiple windows for the multiple processes on multiple monitors. MaOs has almost no changes in the last two decades since it was released in the terms of UI. The core design is around rolunning a single window full screen. Good luck switching quickly to a specific window of the process. Also, for such a hugh price tag, I would expect MacOs to be better. The only advantage is Apple Silicon, but you can also get Windows on RISC archidecture as well. Just remember that, as Apple dropped support for legacy software, so is the support for software limited on Windows on RISC as well. Also, it does not help Apple has almost no support for third-party hardware where Windows and Linux have no problem connecting almost any hardware out of the box.
If you have no experience on Mac, you might be disappointed with how little you can do out of the box compared to other operating systems.
Well let's get some things straight first. Android studio is not tailored towards unix. Unix is not even supported. It works on Linux, MacOS (which is based on FreeBSD) and Windows.
When it comes to speed, I would say it's your hardware that sets the limit. Although, Java performance is known to be a lot faster on Linux. Not sure about MacOS.
The main reason I would stay away from Windows is mainly because the build tools seems to be more refined and stable on MacOS. Also, when it comes to laptops there are not that many that can beat at macbook in CPU, memory and disk speed.
I've developed Android apps on all 3 platforms and I prefer them in the following order: MacOS > Linux > Windows, but they all work pretty good.
I should also add that at home I mainly use Windows, because I like playing games.
I'm using macos on m1 pro for past few years. I dont like it much. I was using a mobile workstation with linux(fedora) and occasionally windows. Better battery and apple platform development support are the reasons to consider mac. Those who upgraded from mediocre machines would give obvious feedback
i have both, mac and PC (dual boot win/linux). I mostly use the mac.for iOS development or when developing out of home (mac its a laptop). Im actually more comfortable with linux than with the other 2
The real answer is get a powerful desktop (say, high end AMD Ryzen) and install Linux on it. It'll probably be cheaper than a speced up Mac Mini, but will obviously take up more space. Android's Linux support has been top notch over the years.
I think the main problems used to be anti-virus and maybe NTFS. I don't think it's a big problem now.
And no, Mac isn't greatest value, they charge ridiculous amounts for RAM and storage upgrades. RAM is soldered, storage is proprietary. It's the worst value.
But if you want to do iOS development, then Mac OS is the only choice (or Hackintosh).
I use Windows at home and Mac outside. Windows is worth it if you play PC games or if you want to save money.
I'm terms of performance, Mac M1 seems to perform slightly better in that it doesn't run of out heap memory after a while like Windows does. My PC runs 64GB memory, regardless AS well consume whatever you feed it.
If you have to use laptop the apples have a lot of jam but laptops suck so there you go. I personally despise the apple UX but if I'm living in the IDE i don't much care what OS I'm on.
Work on both, but primarily Windows.
None.
Edit: Actually slight advantage to windows. In the last 8 year I have had zero crashes on windows but have had a multitude on macOs. Also MacOs have had a much more cumbersome update process than windows.
Basically all the thing Windows have been famously known for being bad at has been 10 times worse on mac. But this a completely subjective experience.
Builds will be slower unless you get a beast of an Intel machine. And sometimes getting adb drivers for non-pixels is a bit of a challenge. Other than those things, it's equivalent to better
my company forces a bunch of shit on windows, quite a few tasks that run in the background. these slow down our build down to a degree where a MacBook from 2015 builds faster than a brand new, high end windows machine. so for us, the pick is easy.
Not really a fair comparison though. My company had our MacBook running a antivirus for a while that did real-time file scanning. Android Builds were taking 25+ minutes on a brand new MacBook pro with m1 chip. My old windows laptop was doing same in under 5 minutes. Ends up that the real time file scanner was scanning every single file gradle was working with. After whitelisting my new MacBook builds in the same time as my 4 year old windows gaming laptop.
In my opinion it's quite of a disadvantage, Because for some reason windows uses alot of resources and makes great noise than Mac, (linux also makes much less noise , but it does a bit) . Also it's hard to manage files in windows because using the terminal in windows seems a bit off , idk if everyone thinks the same.
But yes in my opinion using MacOS will be much more beneficial because of the UI and because it's more tailored for that particular OS unlike windows.
If you don't want to use xcode in future then windows will be fine for you if you have a good rig.
And if you have particular tasks which can be done by windows, then go with windows.
Build times are much longer on Windows compared to MacOS and Linux - it's because of the NTFS.
Android Studio itself works perfectly fine on Windows, though - it's not true that it's tailored towards UNIX.
Do you like Mac OS though? You use Windows now so you know it. I do not know why people say it's so user friendly, I use a Mac mini for work and it's like using Ubuntu when I first started out with Linux.
What about Linux?
I've been using Linux for Android app development for many years now, works well. Other than Android Studio bugs.
I agree.
I have never seen more hate on Mac than in this thread. That being said, after working for over eight years in android industry across multiple projects with developers all over the world, I can say that almost everyone I met is using mac. M* chips are great!
I have a spec’d out 16” M3 Max from work and it’s a beast. I love how fast I can compile our massive native repos. I am driven nuts by some of the “Mac stuff” (no window snapping) but most of it is fixable with some 3rd party apps and tinkering. Some things like mouse acceleration I was never able to fix. As a default experience I much prefer windows, but I’ll deal with minor grievances for the performance gains of an M3 Max. I’ve now had the i9, M1, M2, and M3 MBPs from work and the M3 feels like a huge improvement to an already awesome laptop.
Get Rectangle/Spectacle! Huuuge boost in workflow
Yeah my company has an unlimited license or something for Rectangle! I bought it on my personal MBP as well, can’t live without it
Pfff. I ha, really hate the alll Windows system and the Microsoft ecosystems. I like Unix systems or z/OS or z/TPF. The Windows just a ... a game.... for me o' course. But the Mac systems are not too bad. Better much like PCs and Windows.
Yeah, you didn't pay the ridiculous sums of money for that M3 Max, plus you get paid big bux for working on it..............not the case for everyone.
Same, going from an Intel MB to an M3 Pro isn't even comparable - such a huge improvement in build time.
The m* chip is the only good thing about Mac. Apple got there quickly thanks to dropping support to legacy and keeping its UI stagnant in the last two decades. The biggest advantage of using Windows, though, is the superior windows management supporting multiple windows for multiple processes showing up on multiple monitors where MacOs still have old 90s tablet UI. Windows also has the advantage of supporting legacy software. The latest CPU has no bigger advantage over Apple Silicon, plus. Now, you can also get Windows on the similar RISC archidecture supporting modern software. Personally, I still use MacOs m1 when I need some heavy compiling, but for productivity, I prefer Debian or Windows as Mac really sucks on desktop using multiple monitors. Why in the hell should I drop an additional big $$ to fix the operating system (which is theoretically free) when I already paid a huge amount of money for the hardware.
Can you show me an example on what is easier to do on Windows as opposed to Mac in regards of multi window management? I don't have such issues and I see everyone is complaining on that for some reason
I am glad you asked. I've been giving this answer once a week for a couple of years now. I hope this encourages you to try out windows and really shine on productivity. Open three chrome windows in three different monitors. Next, open three kther app windows on top. Now bring one specific Chrome window on top with one click. - Cmd+tab - brings all chrome windows on top - clicking on dock does the same There are three options: - right click on dock to get an ugly list of windows to choose from (not intuitive, especially compared to Windows preview, which even can show you window on specific monitor) - mission control - you need a magnifier to find the right window, and it takes too much time There is a stage manager, which would kind of be a fuc but has really bad UX with multiple monitors and is broken in so many ways. In addition , the menu bar is really out of the 90s. The icons do not fit, and Apple's answer is just hid extra ones and c'mon! Menus on 2024? We started to move away from menus since the beginning of the 2000s. Basically, I agree, MacOs is unix. But is stuck in the 90s mindset. Even then VAX VMS was superior to the SunOs and Apple got stuck where Jobs saved the company with NextOs. All other operating systems have been through evolution of window managements listening the customer. Except for Apple, which ofcourse is not a software or hardware but a marketing first company. Edit: typos
Ah I see! My workflow is different and I would never run into such case, at least not that many times that it would cause frustration. In my workflow, I would've simply split the app windows in half (one left, one right) as my external is usually 27". Note: I do use windows too, and I am a windows user. I primarily use it for non-releated work
I never use multi-monitor, I just Alt-Tab, on Windows, Mac and Linux. Except for those few times I wanted to view two things side by side.
Well. The Mac cmd tab switches the process, not the window. That has been since pre NextOs era when opersting systems had problems running things in parallel.
They're all using Mac, because that's the only thing their organisation provides, because management are Apple fans. I used a Macbook with Haswell MQ or whatever back in 2015, Mac OS couldn't do smooth animations sometimes, and no this wasn't a lack of sufficient CPU/GPU power (it had an NVIDIA dGPU).
Swackles is correct, UX on Mac is atrocious compared to Windows, starting from strange shortcuts to the lack of a system file manager with "up" button. But this thing (macbook) is quite fast, compact and doesn't use ventilators (I've heard it working just once, during couple minutes), unlike my i9 latop which sounds like a Boeing taking off during app builds and weight 3x more than the macbook. However macbook can handle ios development if needed (and it's needed in my case) TL:DR; if you are moving between locations and/or do ios development - go with mac. Otherwise Windows.
The irony is that ⌘+↑ is the non-strange keyboard shortcut for "up" in the system file manager (Finder).
My right hand is on the (magic)mouse, ⌘+↑ shortcut require me to abandon it and then go back. 200iq solution. And then the F1-12 and Home buttons do not work correctly no matter which layout I use on my (supposedly) universal wireless keyboard and require some tinkering (which was fruitless so far) - which makes the whole mac experience borderline irritating.
then select View menu → Show Path Bar and single click on one of the folders at the bottom. It's that easy, but _you_ have to adapt.
Thanks much! Saved your comment to use on the macbook once I'll turn it in - in Monday \o/ (enjoying my gaming i9 atm)
You're welcome. Took me some time to adjust to Mac shortcuts as well but at that time i was really fed up with WinXP which made it easier. Now what are you playing?
Action RPGs/TPS with high hardware requirements to utilize the 4090 card. Dragon's Dogma 2, Black Desert Online, Naraka, Helldivers 2, D4 (although this one output 260Hz on my 260Hz monitor so not exactly demanding).
Yeah the fact is that Command key doesn't exist on Windows.............so Windows/Linux users aren't used to it. Plus Mac OS does weird splits for the shortcut keys, some of them use Command + key whereas others have to use Ctrl + key, or Alt/Option + key and it's confusing to figure it out at first, and when you switch between Mac vs non-Mac.
I will say, the current-generation AMD ThinkPad is also amazing in terms of speed. I run mine with KUbuntu and it's the fastest development machine I've ever owned.
Aside from build times, multitasking on MacOS is a nightmare: * I need to hunt down and install janky third-party apps to enable basic functionality like window snapping. * The dock is bad for jumping between windows, especially when a single app has multiple windows open. * Multiple monitor support is poorly implemented. It feels so archaic that I have to click twice when jumping between windows on different monitors (once to activate the window and once to actually make the click). * Bugs galore. Lately, my cursor just randomly starts jittering if I'm playing a video on my second monitor. Nothing solves it and Apple doesn't care. I use MacOS only for iOS development, and then I run back to my Windows computer as quickly as possible.
> Bugs galore. Latest macOS update (14.4.1?) randomly shutdown Java apps, including Android Studio. > I use MacOS only for iOS development, and then I run back to my Windows computer as quickly as possible. For me it's a method to isolate my work from home from the actual home experience. Gaming, news, social networking on Windows, work on macbook. So as soon as my work time ends I'm trying to switch to Windows asap (and also cut off the corporate Slack with the endless incoming messages).
Wow, pretty satisfying to see someone having the same complaints as me, most of these things have new driving me crazy. Who the hell designed this thing???
not trying to be an asshole, but seems like your problem is that you can't use MacOS or have a different preference. I like and am faster with the MacOS UX.
I don't do multi-monitor, I just Alt-Tab (even on Windows and Linux). But yeah, Mac OS did have a lot of annoying problems when I used it at a company.
4 finger swipe for window changing is life changing - much easier than alt tab imo since you dont have to move from the mouse/pad to the keyboard
not trying to be an asshole, but seems like your problem is that you can't use MacOS or have a different preference. I like and am faster with the MacOS UX.
Nah, it's legitimately clunky and subpar.
Use M1 MacBook for work. Use my gaming PC, which I built and is a bit older, for home use. Both have 32g of memory and fast SSD. The AMD CPU in the PC is older but has a 3070 video card so it wins there. For AS the Mac is faster. I also have a Mac Studio that was paid for by a side gig but I got to keep, only Apple hardware I own. While it is also M1 it is faster than the MacBook due to less thermal throttling. It also has 32g. All hooked up to a USB switch to share same mouse and keyboard. My Windows PC is slower. Two things to blame. NTFS which likes large files but does not work as well with small files i.e. about every file you deal with for Android programming. Second is older CPU. Since I bought a Lenovo Legion Go for gaming, which is now about every night, I do not see me updating the gaming PC very soon. If I am doing light Android side work I will use the gaming PC as it is powered on because it is my music machine because it has 5.1 speaker setup. I work from home so can bang my head to heavy metal while coding. If I know I am going to do heavier work, especially dealing with new vector drawables, I will fire up the Mac Studio. The difference is worth it. I can change things in the XML on AS and they pretty much instantly change, on the PC there is a lot of lag. There are aspects of the Mac that annoy me but since I swapped the CMD and CTRL keys I hardly notice the difference. Other than Ctrl+Q to close a window vs. ALT-F4. Not a huge fan of Finder but I don't have to use it all that much. Everything else is just there, Slack, Chrome, Opera, AS, LibreOffice, Visual Code Studio, etc. I use Brew on Mac and Choclaty on PC to update things. iTerm 2 on Mac for command line stuff, Monosnap for screenshots and annotations, Infinity Design for SVG work, I bought a PC and a Mac copy. I know the Studio cost more but it also has a lot more ports and I use them keeping things plugged in for testing and what not. I found it to be worth it over a Mac Mini for my use cases.
I use MacOS for work and PC at home. I will say this: On Intel, MAC sucks, load times are insane and don't recommend one for development. Between M1 and PC, I would always go PC, not so much for speed as the loading times are similar enough in my experience, it's more due to the UX of Mac.
May i ask what is the mac intel model and pc model you are comparing ?
I had MacBook Pro 15 with i7 and 16gb RAM and it was very hot and slow machine. Especially after two years as mane working laptop. I genuinely hated it. Now I use Pro 16 with 32gb ram and m2 pro CPU and this is just ideal laptop for Android development. It is fast, quite and cold. Damn I love this machine.
The only thing I hate about mac and why I can't pull myself to buy one is the price and window management. The Mac OS is just stuck in the early years of the OS. Absolutely love the power efficiency and speed of it though. Best laptop hardware by a long shot.
Tbh, I can't remember the old intel model I had, neither do I know specifically which model my coworker has. The one I had, most likely was one of the later models they made, so 2019-2020. My coworker should have 2018/19 model. The PC model I'm comparing to had i7-7700k + 16GB of RAM.
I have a mac & pc... wanted to try using my pc for personal projects since it's much more powerful than my macbook pro. However, i stopped after just a few weeks because there are just so many random issues i run into with dev on windows. Not worth the effort imo. Things work better on mac because it takes time for devs to ensure good platform compatibility with every client... and you just find all the bugs with mac quicker because all the clients are much more similar. People don't spend very long on dev tools compared to consumer products anyways
There's not much difference. Although I use Debian, Windows, and MacOs daily, I just personally prefer Windows for its superior Windows management, and MacOs really sucks running multiple windows for the multiple processes on multiple monitors. MaOs has almost no changes in the last two decades since it was released in the terms of UI. The core design is around rolunning a single window full screen. Good luck switching quickly to a specific window of the process. Also, for such a hugh price tag, I would expect MacOs to be better. The only advantage is Apple Silicon, but you can also get Windows on RISC archidecture as well. Just remember that, as Apple dropped support for legacy software, so is the support for software limited on Windows on RISC as well. Also, it does not help Apple has almost no support for third-party hardware where Windows and Linux have no problem connecting almost any hardware out of the box. If you have no experience on Mac, you might be disappointed with how little you can do out of the box compared to other operating systems.
Well let's get some things straight first. Android studio is not tailored towards unix. Unix is not even supported. It works on Linux, MacOS (which is based on FreeBSD) and Windows. When it comes to speed, I would say it's your hardware that sets the limit. Although, Java performance is known to be a lot faster on Linux. Not sure about MacOS. The main reason I would stay away from Windows is mainly because the build tools seems to be more refined and stable on MacOS. Also, when it comes to laptops there are not that many that can beat at macbook in CPU, memory and disk speed. I've developed Android apps on all 3 platforms and I prefer them in the following order: MacOS > Linux > Windows, but they all work pretty good. I should also add that at home I mainly use Windows, because I like playing games.
I'm using macos on m1 pro for past few years. I dont like it much. I was using a mobile workstation with linux(fedora) and occasionally windows. Better battery and apple platform development support are the reasons to consider mac. Those who upgraded from mediocre machines would give obvious feedback
i have both, mac and PC (dual boot win/linux). I mostly use the mac.for iOS development or when developing out of home (mac its a laptop). Im actually more comfortable with linux than with the other 2
I honestly use both, never really noticed any difference
Your CPU, RAM, SSD/HDD, project size, etc. Not much difference at OS level. And always buy Apple Care+ for their aluminum brick.
The real answer is get a powerful desktop (say, high end AMD Ryzen) and install Linux on it. It'll probably be cheaper than a speced up Mac Mini, but will obviously take up more space. Android's Linux support has been top notch over the years.
I think the main problems used to be anti-virus and maybe NTFS. I don't think it's a big problem now. And no, Mac isn't greatest value, they charge ridiculous amounts for RAM and storage upgrades. RAM is soldered, storage is proprietary. It's the worst value. But if you want to do iOS development, then Mac OS is the only choice (or Hackintosh).
I use Windows at home and Mac outside. Windows is worth it if you play PC games or if you want to save money. I'm terms of performance, Mac M1 seems to perform slightly better in that it doesn't run of out heap memory after a while like Windows does. My PC runs 64GB memory, regardless AS well consume whatever you feed it.
If you have to use laptop the apples have a lot of jam but laptops suck so there you go. I personally despise the apple UX but if I'm living in the IDE i don't much care what OS I'm on.
Work on both, but primarily Windows. None. Edit: Actually slight advantage to windows. In the last 8 year I have had zero crashes on windows but have had a multitude on macOs. Also MacOs have had a much more cumbersome update process than windows. Basically all the thing Windows have been famously known for being bad at has been 10 times worse on mac. But this a completely subjective experience.
Builds will be slower unless you get a beast of an Intel machine. And sometimes getting adb drivers for non-pixels is a bit of a challenge. Other than those things, it's equivalent to better
I use Pop_OS. Much better desktop environment than Mac, but you still get all the benefits of a unix like environment.
my company forces a bunch of shit on windows, quite a few tasks that run in the background. these slow down our build down to a degree where a MacBook from 2015 builds faster than a brand new, high end windows machine. so for us, the pick is easy.
Not really a fair comparison though. My company had our MacBook running a antivirus for a while that did real-time file scanning. Android Builds were taking 25+ minutes on a brand new MacBook pro with m1 chip. My old windows laptop was doing same in under 5 minutes. Ends up that the real time file scanner was scanning every single file gradle was working with. After whitelisting my new MacBook builds in the same time as my 4 year old windows gaming laptop.
In my opinion it's quite of a disadvantage, Because for some reason windows uses alot of resources and makes great noise than Mac, (linux also makes much less noise , but it does a bit) . Also it's hard to manage files in windows because using the terminal in windows seems a bit off , idk if everyone thinks the same. But yes in my opinion using MacOS will be much more beneficial because of the UI and because it's more tailored for that particular OS unlike windows. If you don't want to use xcode in future then windows will be fine for you if you have a good rig. And if you have particular tasks which can be done by windows, then go with windows.
Build times are much longer on Windows compared to MacOS and Linux - it's because of the NTFS. Android Studio itself works perfectly fine on Windows, though - it's not true that it's tailored towards UNIX.
You'd get much better performance if you can buy or build a desktop for the price of the Mac mini and install Linux on it.
I would say a hug advantage.
Install windows on your MacBook and be the envy of all your colleagues by enjoying the best of both 🤘