Reasons Why .NET Developers Love Their MacBook Pros

Initial Questionnaire

I recently posted an informal survey asking .NET Developers why they love their MacBook Pros and I want to thanks the 51 individuals who responded to my survey.

Objective Results

The first four questions (other than name, twitter, etc…) were general questions about their MacBook Pro hardware. Those types of questions are easy and quick to graph.

Note: If you see some discrepancies of the numbers please note that shortly after I first submitted the questionnaire I added the hardware questions. So, the first several people who answered the survey didn’t have those questions.

As to summarize the above charts, it seems that most of the people who responded to the survey were .NET developers using a MacBook Pro with a 2.66MHz Processor, 4 GB RAM, and a 15 inch monitor.

Subjective Results

Well, objectively that is all I can really graph. The rest of the questions allowed free form text, which is difficult to chart :) however, I did attempt to summarize each question into common answers so that I can graph them. So, here are my findings…

So it seems that the majority of those that switched did so because they had the opportunity to run both OSX and Windows, they felt the hardware was better (faster & quality), and they thought it was more stylish :)

Of those that have switched from a PC to a Mac the vast majority (64%) said that they would not switch back to the PC and only a handful were adamant about moving back to the PC.

Mac users feel that their OS is more usable and simple compared to Windows, they feel the software for OSX is better, is more stable, and it was mentioned over and over that the multitouch trackpad on the Mac is a plus!

An overwhelming majority of Mac users feel that they are no sacrificing any performance by using the Mac. Of those that did feel they were lacking some performance, they attibuted it to using a VM (VMWare or Parallels) and recommending using Bootcamp instead.

As a last ditch effort to glean any useful information, I asked if there was anything else I needed to know before I made the change to a Mac. A large portion of the responses encouraged me to purchase VM software (VMWare or Parrallels), reprogram my keyboard for the PC, and to buy as much of RAM as possible.

Conclusion

Overall, I am very pleased with the responses of the questionnaire. I am even more inclined to make the switch myself. Only time will tell if this will actually take place, but I do appreciate you humoring me in this research and I’m sure you will know when and/or if I do take the Mac plunge for .NET development :)