Net development, with a high level IDE that could rival Visual Studio (Microsoft’s flagship IDE since, like, forever). Combine that with advances in the Gradle build system and the success of Kotlin, Android development in general is looking more and more like. In the past 3–4 years - Android Studio has grown into a truly amazing IDE (Integrated Development Environment). So unlike my iOS developer cousins - I’m not limited to a single operating system. Android Studio, unlike XCode, supports Windows, OSX and Ubuntu. I specialised in Android Development and so while I still dabble in iOS here and there, my professional life revolves around Android Studio.

I have played with Windows here and there over the years, but quickly gone back to my cosy OSX home. I was already going to be learning two new languages and two new IDEs, might as well throw a new operating system to boot!ġ0 years later, OSX is still rocking my world. Since XCode was (and still is) only supported on Mac ( OSX), I decided to make the switch to Mac. In 2011, I switched to the Mobile team and started working with Eclipse and XCode. I was also a C# developer, so Windows made sense. I had only ever used Windows as an Operating System (OS) both professionally and personally. The first thing I did was use BootCamp to create a Windows partition and used the laptop as a Windows machine. My OS Backgroundīack in 2010, I received my first MacBook Pro when I joined a hip new startup. Grab a cuppa and kick your feet up, it’s entertainment. No benchmarking, no hard and fast numbers. Just a quick note: this is a subjective narrative, not a technical comparison. I hope you find it useful and let me know if you decide to go down the same route! The following is a narrative about why and how I decided to make the switch, my journey and some answers to some of the questions I had when I started out. Late last year, I decided to swap my main development machine away from OSX and MacBook Pro to a custom-built PC with Ubuntu.

Android studio mac vs windows