One programmer who refused to be named because he’s on the other side of a negotiation table with Apple says that OS X often feels like it’s “wading through mud.” In his experience, the virtual memory system does a poor job paging data in and out of memory, and the default-network file system, AFS, is engaging in some kind of passive-aggressive torture. Others complain about what they see as poorly tuned performance and generally sluggish behavior. The newest versions of the file system on the Mac, for instance, are now both case preserving and case sensitive, but you can still type “ls /library” in a command-line window and get the same results as typing “ls /Library” - not so in most versions of Linux or BSD. Problems like these are disappearing as more developers grouse, but change is slow. The Mac, for instance, insists on using a carriage return to end lines, a historical anomaly that clashes with both Unix (line feed) and Windows (carriage return and line feed). If you’re developing for Sun servers, a Mac laptop offers a portable environment that’s comfortably familiar.Įach developer, though, will curse at some difference that drives them insane. This makes OS X a kissing cousin to Sun’s Solaris and many versions of Linux.
Although the surface layer is dripping with consumer-friendly eye candy, the underpinnings are close to those of BSD. Developers building code for the Unix-dominated world of servers naturally feel more at home on the Mac. Programmers who concentrate on enterprise development and server applications are often devoted to Apple’s hardware, although they’re usually able to cite several dozen glitches and incongruities that annoy them. All the major handheld operating systems except Windows Mobile run directly on Mac OS X, and Windows Mobile runs in Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion. Developers for the Palm OS also seem to gravitate toward the Mac OS X. Google’s Android SDK and RIM’s BlackBerry SDK both run in Java, a language that’s usually well-supported on the Mac (though Java releases for Mac tend to lag behind those for Windows, Linux, and Solaris). The Miami-based Weaver says the fact that he’s using a Mac made it simple to start experimenting with the iPhone development kit, available only on the Mac. The explosion of interest in smartphones is helping the trend. Now 80 percent of his group uses Apple laptops. One team manager interviewed for this article said that his programmers started switching from Dells and ThinkPads at least three years ago. This newfound success has been evolving for some time.
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