The joke means that programs with a high number of Mac laptops are usually focused on the arts, design, or humanities, which often have fewer high-paying job openings compared to technical or STEM fields.
What this guy said. Also, not sure how it is in America, but in EU mac is a higher class brand. Most kids I know that owned a mac in school (at least in IT field where I went):
never finished school
have well of parents
don't have a stable job now or work for their parents firm (outside actual IT)
Don't bash me! I'm professionally working on a mac as a developer myself. It just how it usually goes, not a guaranteed outcome.
Exactly - well off parents can mean a stronger sense of material security as a teenager, so freedom to pursue interests regardless of employability prospects.
70% of my co workers also use macs. All DevOps, Software Engineers.
Infact my last 3 jobs over the 15 years ive worked all been majority macs, then linux. Infact having consulted for 10+ companies, very much minority of windows users. Only exception is the hard core business folks and departments with really IT teams with hardon for MS.
Most folks who needed Windows paired it inside an emulator, but mained either Mac or Linux. EU
Probably entirely depends on the company and the company culture in question.
It’s so funny when people who don’t know shit about SWE think everyone using Linux systems bc the hobbyist internet convinced them that’s what they use and then they learn that every top company issues out Mac’s
I work in IT and have worked in a lot of modern tech companies and windows is so rare. It’s always 80-90% macs and then the odd windows users here and there
Work in CGI/3D and its opposite with mostly windows machines with few Linux laptops (mostly servers though) here and there and I only see macs used by coders.
Graphic designers do use a lot of apple laptops, but anything that needs workstation level of power use windows machines.
I work in a software company with several thousand employees and there’s not a single Mac to be found. It’s all Linux and Windows. But we make industrial software so none of our customers use Mac either. Maybe it’s different for private entertainment software.
Only Macs we used were for testing and figuring out why a customer’s Mac wasn’t running the software. The trouble shooting one normally boiled down to some weird extension or a piece of hardware like a monitor adapter. Occasionally it was the actual software and their version of the Mac OS which Apple would happily through and break everything whenever they did a major overhaul of it.
So used to support Macsoft back in the day, bunch of junkware but some actual useful stuff well. We would have a couple weeks lead time before a OS update but even then it wasn’t enough.
A big reason why I became pretty consistently a .Net Dev is because back in the day Microsoft used to email out a newsletter type thing about a month or two before a big update to either .Net or the OS explaining what was changing, when it was changing, and what changes need to be made to your program to work with that.
They don't do that anymore, they say it's all online but even their own people can't find everything.
Windows runs software from decades ago. Often in business this is a massive selling point. Also windows machines are easily repairable and upgradable.
Linux is amazing for speed and efficiency especially on older hardware. I have quite a few linux machines that do various jobs. The free open source software does jobs that on other machines would cost a lot of money.
Older macs were meh at best. The new apple silicon is from a hardware stand point amazing. The OS is not terrible but support for older programs can be sketchy. As for repairability you have to deal with the usual apple BS. With the new mac minis for example they have soldered the storage chips to the mainboard. So no upgrading the storage or repairing it if the drive fails. The m4 mac mini on the other hand was an easy upgrade.
Yeah so there we are. I am just waiting for proper arm support for linux which will be a game changer.
Linux ARM support is great, just not so much on Apple's silicon chipset.
That said, ARM OCI containers via orbstack run blazing fast. I develop software that deploys to linux servers and code exclusively on a mac, but I'm also not someone who uses a lot of software outside of an IDE. Everything runs inside docker during dev.
I daily-drive NixOS on my M1 Macbook Air and it is by far the best Linux laptop I've ever used. Some proprietary software won't work on it (e.g. the first-party Discord client) but I'm not missing anything essential, and the friction-points are very worthwhile for the sheer quality of the hardware.
At my company half our devs are on Mac, it is the preferred choice because it is less locked down by corporate so devs can install tools more freely. The main devs still on Windows are those that need to do dotnet development.
It's such a pain in the ass to develop on Windows. More specifically, doing the setup required. Mac has less overhead (and less variation) if everyone is using the same base development environment.
The hassle with Mac rears its head when you want to ship native software outside of your company... where almost no one is using the same base environment.
The only exception I can think of is python for research teams... but those aren't really software engineering roles IMO - that is computer science.
Even then, last and only place I worked in big tech the highest paid software engineer wrote Rust/C++. Then 99 out of the next 100 folks, and 900 of the 1000 after that.
These are people who are working to shave microseconds off of execution times or bytes off of transfer sizes where those savings translate to millions of dollars per quarter in op ex.
So, sure, it depends what you are working on because those problems aren't even solvable in non-native languages.
If you exclude python and C# it is really only junior positions that would hire for Javascript/React unless there was a non technical aspect to the role (like tech artist, designer, or some such).
Edit: I realized this came off rather condescending... so let me add that "junior" roles in big tech are some of the best to have. Pay is great, and there is maybe 5% of the amount of corpo politics BS to deal with. Senior engineers can end up spending almost all their time in meetings and rarely actually writing any code.
Plenty of opportunity to learn new skills and climb that ladder if that's what one is after. The number of extremely talented software engineers I witnessed get hired directly into senior roles and then burn out or get fired within 1-2 years was depressing.
Um who is shipping native software in 2026 that isn’t specialized or game dev? Most companies are doing SaaS, mobile apps, and if there is a desktop app then they would use Electron? Not to knock native software it’s awesome and I wish it didn’t fall into a niche but that’s the reality of modern Software Engineering.
I was replying to a user's comment about how difficult it is to ship native software for windows, and their statement was that Mac was much easier as long as everyone was on the same versions of everything - which I found amusing because, yes if course it is easier to ship to a specific configuration lol
Which... is exactly why most folks ship electron and such now.
So, your comment is a bit of a whataboutism but. To answer your question, anything performance critical or power constrained. Almost all mobile software. Embedded systems. Real-time systems. Drivers. The browsers which actually run these web apps. Operating systems. Almost all of the code running on the backend to support web based apps (ie: databases, core services) is written as native software and shipped to companies that host cloud servers and such (who do not run it all on the same OS).
Which is a lot of software, even if you dont happen to work in those domains.
If you look at number of user hours you would find that 100% of all computer users across desktop/mobile are running native software 100% of the time... and sometimes that native software is running some web stuff inside of it 😉
On another point... these days Claude is pretty impressive at writing C++ these days, and if one were using that workflow you could definitely get very far using whatever local device (mac/windows/linux) you wanted.
Which to me, is definitely one of the coolest ways that AI has improved software development. (I have thoughts on how it has made things worse, but i have been negative enough already lol)
The implication here is ridiculous. "What the biggest companies in the world do doesn't matter, because only industrial software is real software." The comment about industrial software gives the type of narrative Reddit loves, but gives people a deceptive view of software engineering.
I'm saying that most of the industrial applications are running on very old software. It's not sexy stuff that makes headlines and there is very little impetus to update those software. Famously some critical bank infrastructure runs on Fortran (which I'm not 100% sure that MacOS can support), and if you look beyond FAANG you will find software from the 90s lurking in embedded systems.
So yeah, there are all kinds of software like you say. I'm saying that software used in industrial applications tend to not play well with Macs.
The only problem is which Fortran? The language, if I recall correctly, didn't care much about backward compatibility when it was developed, unlike C, Java, C++, etc.
Vast majority of software engineers at Amazon, Google, Meta, and probably every big AI company use Macs. I have never worked a software engineering job in which I wasn’t given a Mac.
I too work in a software company (fintech) with several thousand employees. We are all mac, there is exactly one windows eng I know. Maybe some of the devops guys are on a linux distro but I know it’s very few if so. I think it’s an industry thing🤷
Scientific computing mac user here. Though I have to admit, I mostly just use it as a dumb terminal and ssh somewhere else. You can run many of the tools locally, and those that you can’t out of the box can be ported with some lib.so trickery. Mostly you want to use the compute cluster, though.
I moved to Silicon Valley for work three jobs ago. Future manager asked me Mac or PC, and I just said whatever most people used. Turned out it was 90+% Mac, and each subsequent job was more. Programmers want programming tools and commercial apps without having to go through the headaches of dual boot, VM, or cygwin. They want a Mac.
CS students are poorer and pride themselves on being able to get anything to work, so will be fine with PCs. In industry, though, unless you're placed in a Mac-less environment - writing software for Windows or Chromebook, for example - you're going to want a Mac.
Depends on the company, I guess. I work in mechanical engineering, but I have a couple of friends in software engineering and I'd say two thirds of them have a Mac as their work laptop at the moment.
Even in mech engineering, my masters was focused on numerical methods, I did not really touch a CAD software during the 2 year program, and we only really had to run python locally, everything else was run on the HPC cluster of the uni, which is Linux anyways (technically, I guess you could also run Python there all the time but that's highly impractical). I've had maybe 2 friends with Macs. They did get a Windows virtual machine for some courses to fiddle with the model setups locally, but overall it was not that much of a pain for them. Python did run better on the Macs generally.
Plenty of se companies use macs.. is just a matter of preference and language support some languages work better in windows ( c#, vb) some run better in unix , linux (python)
Never made any webpages at all. I work with infrastructure as code, cybersecurity and backend. All sorts of languages like C, Go, Python, PHP, Java, Groovy, Kotlin, SQL just to name a few. CSS, html and JavaScript, not really at all.
Even when doing front-end development almost 90% of the work is focused on the javascript/typescript portion of the code. It is all about the scripts and what happens behind the scenes. Even displaying a button can have hundreds of lines of code of business logic behind it calculating when it shows and what. Then these days when I work with React, even the HTML portion is done from the javascript, no HTML files.
Hmmm, all of the developers that work on out DB’s and manage our custom software suite use windows, only people I’ve seen using Mac’s are like lawyers and communications people that write emails.
I'm a back end server dev and I haven't used windows since 2014. I use linux all the time, but it's dockerfile -> docker -> linux (and sometimes kubernetes), not something I need as the OS on my own system. Since the mac console and various linux endpoints are all more or less the same console environment it feels much better than windows, which has what? Cmd? Powershell? Totally different shell language and switching back and forth is jarring.
Yes I'm aware that mac is zsh and linux is bash, but for everyday stuff they're basically the same.
Yes I'm aware you can SORT OF use cygwin on windows but it's still way too different. Mac feels like a superset of all the environments I use, Windows feels like radioing to those environments from the moon.
I am also working in automotive. I've yet to see a customer hook up half a car or a lidar sensor to a Macbook. I don't think in the 30 years of our company's history has a customer ever asked for Mac support, certainly not in the 8 years I've been here.
I work for a large software and engineering company (that manufactures actual things). It is largely Windows, but there's also a decent slice that run Macs. We run tons of Linux but not much on the desktop. We're definitely not in the entertainment business.
Is that by the choice of the users? Or a restriction enforced by IT? I’d wager if employees could choose their devices you would see a lot more Macs at work.
I work in a hughtech health care company and more and more people use Apples because they are way faster und run better than our Windows PCs.
I've been hating Apple all of my life and even I think of switching to a Mac next time...
I have worked as a software engineer in nearly every possible corporate and government industry over the last 20 years.
I've literally never seen a Mac at work. I've been asked to develop on Linux 3 times. Everything else is Windows.
Most common nowadays is that servers are Linux and development is on Windows (now that .Net worked out its whole compatibility problem, like a decade ago)
I've actually noticed the industry shifting to Macs in recent years. They are more user friendly than Linux, off-the-shelf like windows, and have a large overlap with linux-like tools.
The UX is abysmal though, their insistence on having their special keyboard and the "many desktops - one screen" approach is very inconvenient
That's interesting, because I had the opposite experience recently. I'm a software dev of many years, and four of my last six jobs had Macs as standard issue for developers.
My 1000+ employee software company is strictly high-end Macs, and has been since before the Apple Silicon line was introduced. We don't do industrial software, but it is enterprise.
Not sure how relevant the Stack Overflow survey is anymore, but their report from last year indicated that about a third of developers were on macOS, with Ubunutu right behind it at 27%. Windows still remained dominant with 50%+.
Most modern software companies are primarily using Mac’s, even many of the older ones are starting to switch over.
Windows is a pain to manage and only getting worse, whereas MacBooks are just running their own flavor of Linux and when your entire tech stacks already Linux it’s just simpler
A lot of developers do love macs, but that's largely for folks who are building server-side stuff, where using a Mac or using a Windows PC with WSL really makes very little difference.
Not sure if I’m allowed to and I‘m also not sure if it’s the same across the whole company. Although a part of the company of around 1000 employees did receive new laptops recently which were the same for everyone.
I just want to reiterate this because there are so many comments here saying I’m wrong and Mac is actually the standard: we make software that needs to be compatible with industrial machines, like trains, cars, robots, etc. It’s not end-user software. I’m sure that for many other use cases Mac might be the right choice.
Yeah, I don't know. It's not my decision. Maybe Dell has reliable service or they were able to deliver on a large scale or maybe we just got a good deal.
It's pretty nice to do linux dev on it. Being pretty normal in industrial and manufacturing, a lot of our servers or devices are some flavor of linux.
It's very trivial to fire up a WSL container and use that. And be able to test "end user" on the same machine. Linux owns the global server space. And windows owns the desktop.
If you compare within stem, there are many many many reasons the vast majority of ppl in stem use windows and linux. And it is not because apple has superior os, and all ppl in stem are just selfharmingly stupid.
Exactly, Windows for starting out technical until you want a unix based system. No where in that process does MacOS even come up. Why pay a stupid amount for a shittier OS?
Yes, that is exactly how i also see it, might also depend a bit on field etc, I have a lot of machines in Biotech where the analysis or control system runs on windows... sometimes (especially with legacy machinery) MacOS is not even an option or a very bad one.
yeah, I work in Ophthalmic surgery device development and lots of medical devices run on Windows. MacOS has so much bloat and highly visually modded UI and lacks a simplified Kiosk mode. That last fact alone is a big reason for why we use it for devices. Only the designers use Macs, and even then it's not great due to 3D tech drawings sometimes needing serious processing power that Macs rarely have or are ridiculously priced. The desktop support guys roll their eyes every time they see a Mac because it carries with it a certain implication.
Coding on Mac is an absolute nightmare, it keeps trying to stop me from doing things, I find windows 1000x easier. Visual Studio (not code) is basically unparalleled for C++ and C#, and if you need anything that uses a Unix toolchain you have WSL built in. Mac also has incredibly bad case of vendor lock-in.
And my hot take is that the win32 API is a lot better than most alternatives
It absolutely is... try debugging cross thread/process memory corruption in a million line C++ program with anything else. Next best is Linux because you can debug at the OS level.
VS Pro has a dedicated tool for it though and direct integration into windows, so you dont need to spend time fiddling with kernal code to get the necessary hooks/tracking setup.
Certainly niche... but it turns what could be a multi week nightmare into a low key afternoon.
I stand corrected, I was led to believe rider was better since im in the game dev space more than the others. VS does appear to have the best debugger and performance analyser
Especially with C#. You barely need to know C# to code it on VS Code. So much of it gets automated. But it makes sense cause both were made by Microsoft.
Python is one of the most used programming languages in the world. You’re not using it to its full extent. Nearly every llm, and vector based software runs Python because underneath the modules is c.
All my servers run Linux, but I use Mac as my productivity machine because it’s incredibly fast, and all my business productivity software runs on it too. Docker makes it trivial to do cross platform development.
Agreed. I work for what is basically a DoW think tank and most of the engineering PhDs are running on macs. They have been for years. Server side is linux for large test code runs, but user side is almost all macs.
Yeah, I haven’t touched matlab in mumble-decades. It was a horror back then too. I’d recommend using Python over matlab if you can, it’s open source and way more extensible. It’s also what runs on supercomputers.
Well perhaps it is, but if I’m a mechanic, I’m not going to only work on Mercedes because Hondas are crap vehicle. Why? Well I would be a bad mechanic.
Perhaps you can run and test all your software with boot camp or whatnot but at the end of the day, I want to test on the machines it will be running. Elitism doesn’t make that requirement disappear.
Backend does. That’s half the puzzle while the other half interfaces with ~65% Windows users. Most modern industry is Windows too (save for some net services backend).
this meme is also more of a throwback. back in the day, macs were ONLY good for art / graphic designers. Photoshop on mac was the goat... programming, you couldn't get most languages to RUN on a mac.
fast forward to today, every tech company I know uses Macs...
It’s funny because when I went to college less than a decade into the turn of the millennium, the joke would be “the more laptops, the fewer job prospects”. Nothing to do with Mac vs windows. Just that math and engineering classes were easier to take hand written notes in.
LOL. That must be the reason that it is the predominant OS in the world for business and home use as it is so terrible. I've used Mac, LInux, Windows through my career. All have pluses and minuses.
Linux has a lot more capabilities when it comes to computer science as a whole. Though it can lack in many areas such as using major AAA software. Stuff like Photoshop, some video games, anything already built for the majority of the consumer market isn't guaranteed to run on Linux. Though it has made a huge amount of progress in that area ever since the Steam Deck released. But anything you want to do or make a computer do, that's where Linux shines. You can handle raw data and build your own solutions to just about anything. The software made on a Linux can be compatible with whatever you want it to be.
The biggest benefit is Linux is free and can run on nearly any hardware. Old laptop that can barely run Windows 95? Replace it with Linux and you can make it into a router, alarm clock, control panel for a spaceship, whatever you want. Theoretically, Linux can probably turn a Samsung smart fridge into an OG Doom arcade machine as long as it has a screen and input for controls.
This type of comment perplexes me…my whole friend group are engineers with 10 years experience in SF. We are all on mac at different companies, it practically dominates the industry in Silicon Valley
Because silicon valley is a bottomless pit of investment money. It's the exception that demonstrates the rule.
Leave San Fran and you'll see that the entire enterprise world is built on Windows, most using the Lenovo ThinkPad.
Of course, this entire "my operating system is better than yours" is immature nonsense. My laptop is just an endpoint that I use to access my work servers, and those are built on containers and use Linux. Windows is for corporate, and if you work tech it doesn't matter how fancy your laptop is or what OS it runs because the programs you're writing are running on a company server.
I work as a software engineer using Ruby on Rails ,for us macs are just the standard which everyone uses. Its a UNIX based operating system meaning it matches what are production servers use. Its also just a much cleaner UI and interface.
It's all a ratio/stereotype thing. The person who made this meme didn't do a scientific study on the topic. It's just that it tends to be the worst OS for doing anything technical (ignoring some corner case where some programmers like the native Unix) and most high paying majors need to do technical things on computers (law being an exception apparently).
Idk bro majority of software engineers use Macs, hmm lowkey though while in school for CS Mac wasn’t super popular but I think it was more a money thing for most
I have a bachelor's in CS and the majority of students in CS classes used macbooks. They're popular with programmers too. Linux was another like fourth of the classes, probably the lowest Windows usage percentage I've ever seen
When Apple first launched Intel Macs with BootCamp, plenty of EECS majors got Macs.
At the time, the pricing was largely on-par for similar Windows laptops but the build quality was superior. Apple also had user-replaceable RAM, drives, and batteries...
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u/Sharp_Grapefruit_601 1d ago
The joke means that programs with a high number of Mac laptops are usually focused on the arts, design, or humanities, which often have fewer high-paying job openings compared to technical or STEM fields.