Web Development

Web Development – Mac or PC?

July 8, 2009 July 8, 2009 Oh, the visual envy of a Mac. Their gorgeous industrial design, top notch specs, and high resolution displays. How could anyone argue with Apple's choices? As I walk through the hallways at CDIA, I can't help but understand why students in the Web Development program might feel envious of the sexy Mac labs where the Web Designers spend their time. Then I step back and think about the exact reason why PC's were chosen for Web Development. PC's get the job done, and get it done with less overhead for the soon-to-be potential freelancers. The overhead I'm referring to is start-up cost. I frequently rotate between a high-powered iMac, a high-powered Windows Lenovo laptop, and recently, a low-powered Dell Netbook. The common thing across the three is that they're all able to run the software I need to be a web developer. That's right, a $400 Netbook is able to serve PHP pages, run MySQL queries, and host Apache with seemingly as much pep as a $2,500 iMac. How is it possible that systems with such varying horsepower can work as well for Web Development? Well, it's really simple. There isn't that much processing required for standards compliant pages. We're not talking about making movies, or rendering high-resolution graphics. We're talking about processing text, running SQL commands, and maybe executing some JavaScript. That's it. When you have a choice on environments, use whatever is most comfortable. Don't dare to pigeonhole yourself based on one system because it looks nicer, or has better specs. If you have to turn down work because the client only has PC's and your a Mac person, or vice versa, you're immediately closing the door on a major revenue stream.