That has always been Apple's MO. Ever since their "Think Different" marketing campaign, where they realized they can convince the sheep to follow if they associate with the brightest minds and celebrities (e.g., put an Apple logo next to Einstein, next to an astronaut, etc.) without actually offering a better product.
It's always been a fashion statement to own an Apple product...
What bothers me is how the technical community, both software engineers and academics, have fallen into this trap.
A new Win10 pc is a much better development machine. Sorry, but I do prefer to Think Different and don't care about what is fashionable, but make my choices based on specs, utility and value.
Since I am part of this aforementioned technical community, I will spend a few extra dollars in order to get: 1) high resolution screen, 2) large track pad that works well, 3) native "unix like" shell, 4) sleep that works 100% reliably when I close the lid.
I don't consider it a fashion statement, I just want it to work. After 20+ years I don't like to tinker with my desktop anymore. I would go back to Gnu/Linux for desktop, but finding the right hardware with the above specs is a challenge if not impossible (I have yet to find a track pad driver that works as well as Apples).
I have not reevaluated in 2018, If there is anything better I would like to hear specific examples of hardware and OS combinations?
Funnily enough, IIRC Darwin isn't unix-like - it's an actual certified UNIX™:) Although in the modern ecosystem, perhaps it's more appropriate and useful to say that it's a Linux-like :-)
Most people I've heard this rant from, when further questioned, have barely touched a Mac and don't know anything about macOS to be able to substantively trash it.
Approximately how many cumulative weeks have you spent in OS X / macOS?
I unfortunately took a job at a company that thought they were being fashionable and progressive by forcing each employee to use a Mac. They saw it as a benefit. It was idiotic.
95% of their workforce was using Excel for reporting tasks. But, of course, this was Mac Office 20xx (08, 12?), when the rest of the world was on Office2016+. Half the features weren't available, or required people to hold down 8 keys simultaneously to work.
Right. I guess, for me at least, before it might have existed to an extent, but since machine we’re good value and it was celebs that did the marketing, this didn’t bother me much. Now it seems to me like they are desperately trying to push those things in crowds where I do not want to see being corrupted like this, namely the technical community and engineers.
It's always been a fashion statement to own an Apple product...
What bothers me is how the technical community, both software engineers and academics, have fallen into this trap.
A new Win10 pc is a much better development machine. Sorry, but I do prefer to Think Different and don't care about what is fashionable, but make my choices based on specs, utility and value.