Apple and True Believers

David Heinemeier Hanson (DHH), the co-founder of 37signals, the company behind Basecamp, and the creator of Ruby on Rails, the de-facto standard for developing web applications using Ruby, is a highly influential person in the software development community.

After more than 20 years of using Apple hardware, DHH has announced that he's no longer using a Mac for development. He's not just switching development platforms, he's is actively posting about it and throwing all his weight—which is not small—to spread his discomfort with Apple.

After more than twenty years on the mac, it was always going to be difficult for me to leave Apple. I've simply not been in the market for another computing platform in decades. (…) It wasn't until Cupertino broke my camel's back this year that I suddenly had the motivation needed to uproot everything.

The revenue generated by Apple Macs bought by developers is probably not that high compared to total Macs sold for general use. Also, if you are developing for iPhone, you need to use Apple hardware. However, developers were once Apple "true believers". It's sad to see that Apple executives don't care.

In my opinion, Apple still makes great products. Their laptops are incredibly powerful and MacOS works flawlessly. But developers were always Apple's "true believers". Apple's management is destroying that commitment. It's sad to see the management of a great company let it become an average one.