Which machine do you use? or recommend?

I develop on a macbook pro. I like developing on a mac and I feel OS X provides a better user experience than my PC. However, I feel that there is not really in difference between the two in terms of quality, ease of use, etc. They both get the job done equally well so in the end it comes down to personal preference. If you arent comfortable shelling out $1000 for a computer then dont, get a PC for a fraction of that and reap the benefits of saving money. On the other hand if you are comfortable spending that kind of money, get a mac and you might enjoy using it more than a pc etc. They both have their tradeoffs, but in the end it comes down to YOU and what YOU want and what YOU are looking for in a computer. The whole "this one is better than that one because x" is ridiculous in my opinion.

Agree with the above. At this point it doesn't really matter unless you are doing high end graphics work. Go for whichever one makes you feel comfortable. Though I have to add that PCs always make me do more work while Macs are more seamless.

Thanks Stone and Alcibiades,

I'm definitely going to pick one up; Now the debate is going non-retina or retina display; I'm just thinking if I should get a 15 inch retina display with a big processor or just go 13 inch and get a thunderbolt display?

Depends on what you want to do! Retina displays look great but are not supported by everything out there yet! However they will give some punch to your 15 inch...I recommend a 15 inch rather than a 13 inch (retina or not) if you are going to be developing....I like the extra real state...Even with a 15 inch I find myself scrolling around all the time while taking the code challenges....not so on my desktop!

Hi David Espana,

You want a desktop with two screens at least 23 inches in size. The system doesn't need to be very powerful as it's not doing anything too strenuous.

Next biggest and, in my opinion the most important thing, is a desk at the right height and a chair that offers proper support. You're going to be sat there for hours at a time and it will kill you if you're sat unnaturally. I know, I did a 42 hour shift the other week and I could barely move my neck or shoulder and the muscles were absolutely killing me because of it. You can't work well if you're in pain.

So, two big monitors, good keyboard, good mouse, good desk, good chair and a system to run text editors. That's all you need.

Yes, you can do web design / development on pretty much any type of computer or operating system. The same is true for mobile app development with one caveat: You can use solutions to publish to multiple platforms which generate code for you, but doing native iOS development in XCode is only available on Mac OS X.