tobyg said:
Ah yes but running your car on this gas makes it run like crap. Sure, it'll get you where you want to go but the ride is not nearly as enjoyable. Very bumpy, bloated, ugly ride.
However, this deisel fuel is a much better, smoother, enjoyable ride. I'd go out of my way to find deisel fuel and even pay a bit more for the more comfortable ride, as we all have already done by purchasing Apple hardware and software.
I totally agree -- my current computer is a PowerMac G5 and my next car will be a diesel or hybrid -- but are the majority of consumers like you are me? That's the big question mark inherent in my analogy. You see, diesel may be more efficient, better for the environment, and give you a better experience, but will the vast majority of consumers care, or will they just get what is the most convenient and most easily accessible?
Remember, there is fact and then there is marketing. The two rarely have anything in common. Beta was a superior format, but VHS won because it had better marketing, had more manufacturers behind it, and ultimately achieved market saturation. If Sony announced that all Betamax players would now allow you to also play VHS, nobody would make tapes in Beta even though Beta was a superior format -- the decision on the part of the developer is a business one, not one of "which platform is superior" or "which one do I prefer". It's about "which ones will the vast majority of my customers prefer, and where will I make the most money".
The one thing that a lot of people, myself included, are overlooking in the doom-and-gloom scenario is that Apple is not "officially supporting" Windows and is not including Windows with the Mac or selling a Windows license. The burden of the installation, support, and purchase of the Windows OS falls upon the user -- and that, right there, may be enough to mitigate the fears some of us are having about developers moving away from OS X.
In order for developers to move away from OS X, the following needs to happen:
- Majority of existing Mac users move to Intel.
- The majority of existing Mac users who have switched to Intel have also installed Windows on their new Intel Macs.
- The vast majority of new Mac users will also be installing and running Windows.
The only likely scenario is the first one, the rest are minority concerns. Apple has provided a cumbersome solution to those who really want to run Windows, but the fact is that right now they don't NEED to run Windows. I think what Apple will do with 10.5/Leopard is fold the dual booting feature into some variation of Fast User Switching or a virtualized environment, and then make the argument of how superior Macs are that they can run, at full native speed, a competitor's OS in a window while performing fabulously at all this other multitasking stuff.
Hey, I have an idea for Apple. Why don't you turn Windows into a Classic-like layer so that you can run Windows applications right in OS X, in a relatively seamless way, to happily coexist with all of your other OS X applications, dock items, etc.? Drag and drop would work, all of that. Now THAT would be a phenomenal development where Mac adoption would skyrocket and the superiority of running as a Cocoa application would be immediately clear, users would clamor for it, and with a user base that was growing by leaps and bounds you would, as a developer, take notice of your users' requests.
