I personally think that Macs are eating into the Linux crowd. Haven't you noticed that in the past year or two how the buzz over Ubuntu has dwindled, and now all the "cool" developers run around with macs? I wonder what those official stats are.
If the Mac can get the apt-get system working really well (not like fink or ports, but really working in a hassle-free way), then I think it will be unbeatable. Right now, I still prefer Linux. It's just a lot better for development work.
After citing my confusion as to why OSX doesn't have a decent package manager, doesn't ship with apropos, doesn't come with gcc, etc. to my friend Nick, he stated that 10.5 was quite a bit more fussy. I haven't used 10.4, so I can't be sure what has changed, but it's a fairly grumpy environment (for backend development, at least) compared to Ubuntu.
GCC is on your Leopard DVD. Just install the developer tools. Maybe apropos was also in there. Dunno.
Personally, I am extremely happy with OS X 10.5 for my Java, C++ and Python development. Everything that I need is there. Great editors, Emacs, IntelliJ IDEA, all the usual open source tools through MacPorts.
Leopard also has some clear advantages over Linux for me, like for example dtrace and it's visual cousin Instruments.app. Dtrace is one of those tools that you will miss sooooo much when you are putting your code in production on Linux. It will probably be the reason for me/us to move to OpenSolaris as a production platform.
My only gripe is that Apple is slow slow slow with Java. I really hope they will let Sun and/or the community do Java 7 for OS X. It seems they abandoned that effort and put everybody on the iPhone or so.
I misinterpreted your comment to mean that 10.5 was a step backwards from 10.4.
That said, it is a viable development platform, and Apple does provide gcc with XCode. If you want a package manager, there's Fink available. As far as apropos, I've never used it so I don't know.
My personal setup is the best of both worlds: work on a Mac and SSH to a Linux server when needed.
"After citing my confusion as to why OSX doesn't have a decent package manager, doesn't ship with apropos, doesn't come with gcc, etc."
wrong: macports or fink.
wrong: apropos apropos: apropos(1) - search the whatis database for strings
wrong: gcc -v: gcc version 4.0.1 (Apple Inc. build 5465)
Maybe you could actually TRY things before you make completely false claims that you haven't bothered to test... There is nothing "fussy" about it... I don't even really know what that means. 10.5 ships with xcode just like (pretty much) all the iterations before it. I think 10.0 was the only one to not include it.
Both macports and fink are poor compared to recent linux package managers, which is no surprise since they follow an approach (bsd ports) Apple doesn't use for it's own software. What is really irritating is that macports-installed shared libraries occasionally cause linking problems.
Also it's important to keep in mind although you get XCode when you buy OSX, it requires a separate installation step that's both time consuming and easy to overlook and if you're getting OSX with a new computer you'll probably want to ignore the one that comes with it and download the most recent version from ADC which is clumsy compared to apt, yum, conary, etc.
Sorry, I was merely given an OSX machine at work. Apparently 10.5 didn't refresh xcode, or something. I don't know the details -- this particular layer isn't something I focus my efforts on.
I also recall that several piece of software just failed to install completely. Twisted web and the Divmod stack, for example. And multicore usage wasn't really very good compared with Ubuntu. And the macbook kept seizing up at random, a few times a week.
My overall impression was 'this isn't better than Ubuntu.' Maybe I just got a bad start? I wouldn't mind trying it again, but if I had to install something from scratch, I'd use Ubuntu.
OSX does come with gcc, it's in Xcode. That's not (IIRC) installed by default but installation is just a matter of dragging a folder off the DVD you get in the box.
I expect that if you were using OSX to develop WebObjects apps to run on OSX Server, it would kick ass. If you are targeting LAMP I agree it has (few) advantages over Linux.
I used to be a hardcore linux user, then I got a Macbook. But I got the Macbook for aesthetics. I still run a VM for Ubuntu and use it for most of my development that involves any form of compiling.
This dude is a little late. Macs have been interesting since the release of OS X and have been really interesting since OS X 10.3 when things finally started to speed up an stabalize.
