Rockstar Developers

(cross-posting this to http://www.blakeseely.com/blog/ just while I get a feel for Vox)

Is the software just better? Do people use a Windows app and think “This is brilliant, I really want to meet the person who built this!”

Is the community just smaller? Is it not possible on other platforms to have a grasp of who some of the bigger players and also have those people be relatively accessible?

Is it just more important to Mac users and developers that their developers have blogs and ideas besides just writing software?

I think it was Brent Simmons who suggested that the phenomenon starts at the top - Steve Jobs - and from there flows an importance on personality and opinion in addition to powerful, well-designed software. Is there more of a cult of personality on the Mac?

In the end, it’s probably a combination of everything above - without a small-ish community, maybe it would be impossible to keep track of all the blogs and software that talented Mac developers are putting out there. And the Mac platform definitely cares about style and design in addition to functionality. Whatever the reason, between getting to meet so many new people, ordering a new Mac Pro, and seeing the first glimpses of Leopard, I think my first WWDC was a good one. It’s a good time to be a Mac developer.

What do you think? Which rockstar Mac developers do you look up to?