Do MSFT SWE guys use Macbooks or you must use MSFT products (surface, etc.) for SW design and development ? Or do you guys use dell/hp/etc other laptops ? How about phones ? Does MSFT provide mobile phones for personal/business use ? Do you guys get to choose an iPhone ? I have never spoken to a MSFT person and have no knowledge about this, so curious to know.
Mostly development is on Windows with few exceptions based on the project. And for system we have options to choose from either dell or thinkpad or surface but again it depends on org and may vary from org to org. We don't get any mobile phones.
If you’re in iOS Apps development team or in UX you use MacBooks. Else nope
Microsoft has many IOS engineers. People who need Apple laptops get them. But clearly we need people to use Microsoft products who can also help improve them. So a preference is placed on Windows.
Most develop on a Zune
This is true. I work at Microsoft.
Can confirm. I have 9 zunes that I use for my productivity.
It depends on your team. If you can justify that you need it, you will get it.
It will be a productivity hit if you are the only one in the team using Apple. Think about it. All the documentation, instructions will be assuming Windows. If you’re stuck, you’ll have to figure stuff out almost entirely by yourself if no one else has gone through the same issue on OSX.
Why would anyone care if you used an iPhone? We haven’t had our own phone OS in half a decade. My team is about 50/50. Some are iOS engineers that obviously need Macs. Some work on back end services I’m C# that need windows. The android and web developers are left to their own decision and most of those choose Windows, whether out of company loyalty or because the other productivity software we use day to day is better on Windows.
They’ve started letting ppl use Apple products from what I’ve heard from a friend there. Although he works at Azure, which is a bit outlier.