Mac's in a web development office?

I'd say stick with what you have unless those workstations are failing to meet the needs in some ways. You mentioned that you just spent a lot of money and time getting your server setup, why invest more money and time on something that is not needed.

Less disruption means more productivity.

Hi Webcity. If your current setup is working fine and helps get the work done in a timely manner, maybe just stick and maintain it. Unless you are adding staff, or one of your PC 's hardware is defective or problematic, not yet needed to get new replacements.

Stick with what you have. While I personally greatly prefer using a Mac for web development, it is definitely not needed and doesn't really make me any more productive. Maybe if you were going to hire more people and wanted to give them the option of using a Mac but even then it might not be worth it.

webcity said:

I want to improve the look/feel of the office and that will possibly include changing the computers that are in use.

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Why? Is that going to result in you getting more business? Being able to attract better employees? Sounds like an easy way to waste a lot of money.

webcity said:

I would be interested to know your thoughts.

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Macs, in my opinion, is probably the best platform for web development.
You get all the POSIX UNIX toolsets as well as the Adobe CS suite along with MS Office. You can also virtualize all environments- Windows, Linux, and of course OSX.
When you run open source tools like Apache, GIT, rsync, SFTP, SSH, it is all the same across *NIX operating systems. With windows, you have to use a bunch of third party shareware apps and the experience is not the same.

If you are a dot net shop, then definitely stick with PCs.
But if you are a LAMP stack, Python, RoR (Ruby on Rails), you can either go Mac or Linux. In fact, the preferred platform for RoR and trendy NoSQL stuff like Cassandra,Mongo is OSX.
Developing LAMP, RoR and all the open source stuff is easier on the mac/linux. You can do all your coding/dev and drop in the console without weirdness like Putty/Cygwin. If your web servers are Linux,it is easier to migrate and set-up similar staging environments. For example, setting up paths like /folder/file is much more consistent across UNIX oses than that of d:\inetpub\file.html

If you ever go to the big developers conferences and workshops, you'll notice something interesting. A majority of those users are toting macbook pros. If you go to Google's main campus, a large majority of developers are using Mac OSX. Even the entire Android dev team are mostly mac users.

However, you should stick to what you are familar with, If you are hosting your server on a Windows machine, then it sounds like you are already a Windows shop. I'm a big believer of sticking with familarity. If your dev are still PC-Centric. Get their feedback before making a major change. I tried to switch a group of Mac developers to Linux (due to costs) and that didn't work out too well.

Why not keep your existing set-up, as others suggest, because it works right now for you, and instead (if you have the desk space) get some vintage 'design classic' Macs simply for aesthetic effect? I'm thinking the original coloured iMac and its equally original white lamp-style successor. Maybe a clamshell iBook? You should be able to get them at good prices from eBay and the like. Get your company logo on some screen wallpaper on the old machines and, when the clients arrive, boot up the old Macs. It'll certainly be different and maybe a real talking point before the clients get see what other good stuff you can do.

Personal opinion(s):

1. The Mac is the best platform for Web development.

2. The best platform for anyone is the one they already know how to use.

3. The difference in (1) is not enough to offset (2).

Windows, despite what the Mac fans here (myself included) may occasionally say, isn't that awful. (Caveat: I have not used Windows 8. Maybe Windows 8, or "Window 8" as it should probably be called, really is that awful.)

I prefer Mac for development. I am working as a lead-developer on a large agency, with over 8 years experience in programming.

The workflow is great on Mac (I'm using Sublime Text 2), and I like it way better than Windows (I switched to Mac 5 years ago).

However, if your current setup is working, spend the money elsewere, and replace the computers to Macs when they die

webcity said:

At present, our web development office are using a mis match of computers and I want to improve the look/feel of the office and that will possibly include changing the computers that are in use.

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Hide those ugly PC's just get Apple Cinemas, that's it!

IMO it depends on what stack you're developing on. If you're writing .Net apps or deploying on Windows Server, stick with Windows, of course.

But if you're writing Python, Ruby, PHP or other scripting languages with POSIX roots, or in some cases even Java; if you're deploying to any sort of UNIX or Linux server...

In those cases it's awesome to have OS X because each developer can run a local development instance of each site using the same tools and libraries as on production (even if compiled or configured slightly differently than the production and staging servers). In the same environment as Photoshop, browsers, etc. -- which saves a lot of effort shuffling assets back and forth.

You can't really do that the same way on Windows unless you're using VMs (slow and clunky).

webcity,

It honestly sounds like you want to go Mac, and you're looking for justification to make the change. You've given different reasons in different posts to rationalize the change. I'm not criticizing, I fully understand. All the reasons you stated no doubt are important to you as well, but when you get to the nitty-gritty of the matter, you want Mac's.

It may or may not be the best business decision for you at this time, but it's clear that you have the bug (the Mac bug). If it's YOUR decision to make, and it's what you want, just do it. If your developers want to work in a windows environment, you can just install windows on your Mac's. That way you can have your cake and eat it too, as they say.

Just my $0.02 worth.

webcity said:

Thanks for your posts.

The reason I'm considering this is two-fold really. First and foremost, our office is looking tired so we're going to be (hopefully) getting it decorated, new carpet, etc, and the last thing we want is to put old tired looking PC's back in it once it's all looking nice.

We put a lot of emphasis on image and I think that's an important message to get across to clients when they visit our office.


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Image is something that is extremely important to us as a company. When clients walk into our offices we want them to know they're dealing with a professional company, and I'm sure that's the same for a lot of web/graphic design companies.

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In relation to the above post, just sharing some photos of office workstations that look sleek and presentable to visitors. Professionally looking offices may help in bringing in more clients.