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Add to SafariWhen comparing macOS vs ChromeOS, the Slant community recommends macOS for most people. In the question“What is the best laptop OS?” macOS is ranked 25th while ChromeOS is ranked 52nd. The most important reason people chose macOS is:
The UI of Mac OS is rather unrivaled. The smooth, responsive, and cohesive UI makes the system quite joyous to use.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Polished UI
The UI of Mac OS is rather unrivaled. The smooth, responsive, and cohesive UI makes the system quite joyous to use.
Pro Based on Unix
macOS being a UNIX certified system means that you can install a lot more stuff with a lot fewer headaches than if you were on Windows.
Pro Easy access to lots of great dev tools
There's a large selection of great development tools available for OSX. The operating system itself comes bundled with a powerful terminal emulator, called Terminal. Additionally, Apple provides tools, like Xcode, an IDE that contains a comprehensive collection of tools for developing OSX and iOS software, for free.
Pro Powerful terminal
It's very similar to a Linux terminal.
Pro Best support for Objective-C
Pro More commercial software and gaming support compared to other Unix systems
Adobe CC, MS Office, Steam games.
Pro Has many special tools for developers
Has support for multiple IDEs.
Pro Lots of open-source software available
Because it's Unix under the fancy GUI, most open source ports easily to it.
Pro Ideal setup, out of the box
Next to no custom configuration is necessary.
Pro Great Git GUI tools
Tower, Kaleidoscope, SourceTree.
Pro Has software that only runs on Mac
For example, Sketch.
Pro Streamlined workflow between devices
Because this is an Apple product, there is a streamlined workflow between your computer and all mobile devices. For example, if you type an a Pages document, once you save, you can open the updated document just moments later on your iPad, and vice versa. The same goes for iMessage, (yes, you can text people with your phone number from your computer. Actually, you can text other people with apple devices with just your Apple ID, with or without a phone number, for free!) Numbers, Notes, Reminders, Contacts, and just about any other Apple workflow application.
Pro Great modifier key layout
Pro Using VMware you can also run Windows 10 on the Mac
This is useful for testing and some development tools that are Windows-only (XML Spy, MapForce).
Pro You need it to compile macOS or iOS apps
Pro “Just a web browser”
On the other hand it’s pretty difficult to mess up “just a web browser”. You might get a few less phone calls from your elderly relatives about how they broke their fancy new email and internet machine.
Pro Android apps
Android apps add basic offline functionality.
Pro Booting & updating
Chrome OS boots from power off in about 7 seconds. So you don't need to leave it on and consuming power when it's not in use. You NEVER download and update any apps, although the OS does update itself. Web apps live on servers, so they're always up to date and virus free.
Pro Full laptop form-factor
Unlike tablets, the home of most hyper user friendly operating systems, Chromebooks come on an array of devices that don’t require you to buy any flimsy keyboard attachments.
Pro Pushes oneself to use (and learn how to use) cloud based solutions
With this ChromeOS also eliminates the time needed to configure the local environment.
Cons
Con Expensive
OSX is tied Apple hardware and Apple hardware tends to be expensive for what it gives.
Con Limited hardware
Usually, the hardware that can run this can't be upgraded.
Con Most software is closed source
For people who like to use open source tools for their development work, this may be a problem. There's plenty of advantages to open source software, one of which is the ability to tinker with and customize the tools themselves that you are using. Although there's plenty of FOSS tools available for Mac, especially through Homebrew, the number of packages available is much lower than the number of packages available for any Linux distribution.
Con Closed source
Mac OS is closed source itself, which means that it is developed more slowly and has more problems.
Con No native package management
A comparison of package managers available for OSX can be found here.
Con Poor application support
Fewer apps run on Mac OS than on Windows or Linux.
Con Bash version is obsolete
macOS comes with an obsolete version of Bash, due to licensing issues.
Con Vendor-Lock-in
You are now forced to use the Apple services.
Con Silly modifier keys layout
The Command key is strange, Alt is where Super should be.
Con Poor X11 integration
The most open source software does work but is very poorly integrated due apples ancient version of the X-server.
Con Very few options for running hosted, on the cloud
Con Too little customization options
Con Touchbar on Macbook Pro's
Con Not very user-friendly
Con “Just a web browser”
There aren’t really any applications you can get on ChromeOS. If you can do it via Chrome you can do it on a Chromebook, but not much else.
Con No icons on desktop
Chrome OS does not allow to place icons or shortcuts on the desktop, only the background picture can be changed.
Con You might need a cloud printer
If you don’t live in the paperless world yet and you haven’t bought a new printer in the last three years you may need money up for a new cloud enabled printer.
