PC or Mac for web development?

LiE · 18 Jul 2009 at 11:54

As the title says. Which is best for web development ?

Edward01 · 18 Jul 2009 at 12:23

which ever runs notepad++ the fastest

mr.sly · 18 Jul 2009 at 12:26

Completely down to personal preference. Unless there's specific programs you want to use that are only on one platform.

Tripnologist · 18 Jul 2009 at 12:59

mr.sly said:
Completely down to personal preference.

Exactly! They're both good for web dev and it's all down to preference.

rsatd · 18 Jul 2009 at 18:53

Edward01 said:
which ever runs notepad++ the fastest

Vi for hardcore!

(Use Geany for actual development, vi to just change little things)

Izi · 18 Jul 2009 at 19:54

php or asp.net?

.net works best with visual studio which i beleive is only available on windows

tsinc80697 · 18 Jul 2009 at 20:23

Personal choice.
I used windows for 3 years doing web design/development, got a macbook pro to try out OSX and I now just have a mac pro at home and a mac mini in work!

Pho · 18 Jul 2009 at 20:23

PC. It has IETester + Google Chrome support.

And .NET as mentioned.

Izi · 18 Jul 2009 at 21:13

Pho said:
PC. It has IETester + Google Chrome support.

And .NET as mentioned.

good point re IE tester although it will probably run within wine?

either way i would still use a PC as its less fuss. Oh and you dont have to pay twice as much for the hardware

z3b3dy · 19 Jul 2009 at 08:11

Pho said:
PC. It has IETester + Google Chrome support.

And .NET as mentioned.

You can get Chrome for OS X (Chromium), it's not officially out yet but the nightlies are moving forward fast:

http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/snapshots/chromium-rel-mac/

On another note if you want to watch Chromium being built this can be fun to look at occasionally:

http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/waterfall/console

Django x2 · 19 Jul 2009 at 22:51

I use PC now for almost all web stuff. Photoshop works great on x64 PC and with IE8 you have the CSS browser and code browser (hit F12) which is a handy feature.

suarve · 20 Jul 2009 at 00:46

A PC. Using a mac would be wrong

z3b3dy · 20 Jul 2009 at 09:13

suarve said:
A Mac. Using a PC would be wrong

Smit · 20 Jul 2009 at 09:19

For coding it makes zero difference which one you use if your applications are supported on both.

For testing then I would go with the PC, should be more tools/browser support on Windows than on a Mac although it's probably quite close.

LiE · 20 Jul 2009 at 09:27

I guess it's not the case any more where web designers/developers need a mac. Still a lot of companies use macs as their platform which I assume is down to people stuck in their ways?

GravyMonster · 20 Jul 2009 at 09:52

Exactly. No one needs a mac

uchuff · 20 Jul 2009 at 10:16

As previously stated unless you are working with .Net (in which case use a Windows PC) then it's down to personal preference.

Windows would probably make most sense as you can run Safari on Windows but not IE on OSX (natively), although I still prefer OSX so I use my macbook with a copy of Parallels.

Dj_Jestar · 20 Jul 2009 at 10:21

If you want a Mac, get a Mac. If you want a PC, get a PC. I (using Linux), and colleagues (who use Macs) have no problems developing in .Net on VMWare or similar. Hell, you can even use Mono to develop (though it does not support absolutely everything .Net has to offer.)

As for PHP, MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc. to develop with those on Windows is using them on a non-native platform

fez · 20 Jul 2009 at 13:44

The OS is pretty much the only consideration here. Both are equally useful and well equiped for web dev. If you need IE and chrome on the mac there are simple solutions.

denyerec · 20 Jul 2009 at 14:09

Yeah I don't think you're going to find much of a difference, you have to run a handful of VM's to successfully test various versions of IE anyway, which you can do from a Mac if you wish just as easily as you can from Windows.
My vote would be PC though, then you can spend the spare £1000 you just saved on something else cool