I use a Mac because i was tired of virus and BSOD on Windows and i dont have Adobe Flash running on Linux. On a Mac, everything just works!!
Before Ruby on Rails i develop with Coldfusion (that is nice!), but develop with RoR is fun and very nice! 
Most people learn by example. I suspect that the reason most Rubyists use Mac's is because the people they learned Ruby from (and/or admired for their Ruby skills) used Mac's. Why those people used Mac's is anyone's guess, but I would speculate that there exists a strong 'contrarian' trait in many early adopters. Mac's are THE great 'contrarian' IT statement. This trait may also possibly account for why the early adopters picked up the Ruby language to begin with.
Personally, I have worked with Ruby on all three of the major Ruby development platforms (Linux, OS-X and MS-Windows XP). I simply do not see all that much difference between them, ONCE one has customized each environment to ones own taste. To be frank, I have never really taken to Apple's 'Aqua/Finder' windowing environment and that is one of the reasons (out of very, very many) that I found MS-Vista so repellent.
On my MS-Windows laptop I use the CYGWIN environment together with VIM (windows installer version with the vivid_chalk plugin) and POSTGRESQL (also the windows installer version). Between the three of these I essentially have an identical duplicate of my CentOS-5.4 desktop environment wherever I travel. Since most of my business associates (nearly all non-developer, non-IT types) use MS-Windows themselves, this arrangement allows me to easily work within their corporate standard MS-windows products on site and yet still retain the convenience of a Linux-like environment for everything else.
I would be surprised if many programmers bought Macs, having owned something else presumably, just to run a language. Ruby was available on all platforms from the off (or at least since the article in Dr Dobbs). In my experience a lot of web developers and graphics people like Macs and Rails is a web framework. So Ruby, via Rails, caught on with Mac users who are not shy about telling the world about things they think are great.
Community and Evangelism tend to go hand in hand with Mac users
I really don't understand why giving so many importance to Hardware and Software.
What really matters IMHO is People and his Ideas, from Matz to we all.
I have written something about that here:
And here:
I do use Windows so far with no problems (thanks to Luis Lavena), if I need to change for any reason, will never go to an even more proprietary O.S. (OS-X only runs on Mac hardware...), will go to any Linux flavor in a hardware of my choice and budget.
Regards.
I think the fact that Macs come with lots of developer-friendly tools (ssh, vi, ruby, etc) makes them more useful out of the box than a Windows machine (which will require you download tons of stuff just to have an equivalent devlopment environment).
i think OSX is suite with programmer. special if you need make slide,you can use keynote. this is killer app.
Because Rails developer wants to be fashion. lol
Yeah, and we have a thriving recipe-swapping community 
Great analogy btw
Taryn
Hey Gintautas,
You stole my points. They were good points (-.
I also use Ubuntu and have a separate workstation for Photoshop/ Windows. This other workstation has plenty of other uses that justify its existence, but the sheer fact that I need two workstations just to have couple dozens terminals opened and have Photoshop at the same time is giving me shivers.
BTW by "those other uses" I mean: Ubuntu through VirtualBox running tests for the application. And it's an extra monitor so... couple dozens terminals more! Just don't tell me that MacBook is mobile while my environment is not. My setup would also be mobile if I only had a camel.
I think I should have a Mac just because most of developers I collaborate with and clients in the U.S. use them. Only I'd need to learn all quirks of a Mac, and you know, we developers are lazy. Fortunately my current team (Rails team in Sage Software) settled on Ubuntu as well.
Cheers, Wojciech
Rails: Makes common decisions for you so you can focus on the end result. Works great for 99% of cases, but if you want to do your own thing for special cases it's not hard to do.
OS X: Makes common decisions for you so you can focus on the end result. Works great for 99% of cases, but if you want to do your own thing for special cases it's not hard to do.
Jarin Udom wrote:
Rails: Makes common decisions for you so you can focus on the end result. Works great for 99% of cases, but if you want to do your own thing for special cases it's not hard to do.
OS X: Makes common decisions for you so you can focus on the end result. Works great for 99% of cases, but if you want to do your own thing for special cases it's not hard to do.
Windows: Makes common decisions for you so you can focus on the end result. Guesses wrong for 99% of cases, and it is a bitch to make it do what you want it to do. Ultimately, you give up and redefine "wrong" to be "right."
Linux: Historically it did not make *any* decisions for you. With "modern" distributions it now offers reasonable defaults. If you are smart, you decide to accept the defaults. You *always* do your own thing. Turn the dial to 11.
gvb
