I've noticed a growing trend in the software engineering world, one that I myself have become a statistic of. More and more developers are buying Macs and running OS X as their native environment. As strange as it may seem at first, this idea is starting to make a lot of sense.

OS X is known for its stability and shares much of the same luxury that other alternative operating systems do when it comes to the almost nonexistent virus and worm threat. Furthermore the same hardware that makes OS X so stable coincidentally also gives Windows a nice foundation to run on, either virtualized or by using Boot Camp. The ability to virtualize Windows and run native UNIX and FreeBSD compiled bits gives one an extremely versatile OS.

Once I got past the Playskool™ feel and false pretenses, OS X had a lot to offer me as a user and developer. I can use my Mac for most of my administrative work and communications quickly pop into Windows to write some code, then switch back to OS X for some keynote action. No, I will probably never use Powerpoint again unless it is forced upon me with heinous threats. Now I am a .NET developer to the core and I have a lot of reasons to spend a decent amount of time in a Windows environment. Regardless, I am starting to buy into the hype and look forward to the time I actually get to spend on my mac.

I expect that this trend will not result in a mass adoption of OS X the operating system of choice for developers. I do however think their curiosity is rising, as was the case with me, and they will start thinking about picking up a secondary machine of the apple flavor. So am I going to stop using Windows any time soon? No, probably not. But I have found a nice cozy home away from home.