From the outside it seems that Mac developers have just as much trouble, but with things like homebrew and developer tools in general. At least if doing anything else than web programming.
Is this wrong?
If you try to continue to run Linux apps via various Mac-packaging systems, then yes you are going to have a bad time. It's the same packages and upgrade interdependencies as on Linux, plus extra breakage due to running on not-Linux.
The way forward on a Mac is to run Mac native applications. Not really a surprise -- a Windows user who switches to Linux but wants to run all the same old stuff via Wine would be better served by switching to native apps where possible.
I've tried that, but the officially blessed Mac way of doing package management, the App Store, has almost none of what I want in it. How am I supposed to switch if there is nothing to switch to? Say I want to stop using Audacity and switch to a proper Mac solution. What do I pull from the App Store?
Downloading executables remains a blessed way of downloading stuff for the Mac; I use Audacity.
I wish more free software developers would pay the $99 tithe to get their stuff added to the Mac App Store though. (Any free software guys here? I'll pay the $99 for the first one to email me at cjensen@acm.org)
That article seems to be talking about the App Store for iOS (the one you access via iTunes). We're talking about the Mac App Store that provides OSX applications.
Now although the situation might be the same, I'm not definitely sure that it is - for one thing OSX still lets you run unsigned binaries (and thus modification to source code).
GarageBand? Logic Pro X? Reason? Cubase? Ableton Live? My personal favorite is Renoise, since it's cross-platform. Any number of DAWs are available on OS X — you just have to pay for them, sometimes.
but... where's the source? Those are all closed, proprietary programs. They might be fine in their own right, but they are not free software. Audacity is free software, as is Ardour.
The better answer to this question is probably that Mac OS X is not the best platform to run free software on, just like Microsoft Windows is suboptimal at best. Given that those platforms are closed and proprietary this is not that surprising. If you want to run free software, start at the bottom - the kernel. It is not like there is a dearth of choice when it comes to running free kernels after all.
The Mac doesn't need package management, I don't know why you're insistent on it. The App Store isn't package management, it's just one way to download sandboxed apps.
Valgrind is still working on getting OS X 10.8 support working.
Each platform will have strengths and weaknesses. For example, the upcoming stuff in XCode which will let you see power usage have no parallel in Linux. If your stuff is portable to Mac and Linux, you get to use both Valgrind and XCode to improve your code.
Yes. The package management is excellent via Brew (similar to archlinux's system).
The "trouble" comes from getting the core OS to behave and play nice with the hardware. That is rarely an issue with Apple's platform, speaking from personal comparative experience.
Also, Apple's SDK for their own platforms is the currently the best around, bar none.
I do mostly platform-independent C++ stuff, using Mac OS for my day-to-day work. No web development. I am unfamiliar with homebrew. What sort of troubles have you heard about?
