Star From Win32 to Cocoa: a Windows User's Conversion to Mac OS X
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 21st Apr 2008 19:00 UTC, submitted by Adam S
General Development Ars' Peter Bright wrote an article today entitled "From Win32 to Cocoa: a Windows user's conversion to Mac OS X", in which he explains why he believes "Windows is dying, Windows applications suck, and Microsoft is too blinkered to fix any of it". These are rather harsh words, but there is a definitive element of truth in it. The article is part one in a three-part series.
E-mail Print r 4   · Read More · 48 Comment(s) http://osne.ws/f6a
Permalink for comment 310892
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
RE[3]: Comment by TBPrince
by snozzberry on Tue 22nd Apr 2008 16:49 UTC in reply to "RE[2]: Comment by TBPrince"
snozzberry
Member since:
2005-11-14

Unfortunately, for years Apple's platform was a really good platform but only in specific areas. We all know Apples were great in GFX, in desktop publishing and so on but the very fact they weren't good as general purpose machines


You base this statement on what? Did the Mac versions of Office lag their Windows counterparts in any provable fashion?

, made them irrelevant to the market and general users.
No, the fact that you can buy something from eMachines for $400 is what keeps their market share small.

We know (and Apples knows that too) what users want: a machine which you could use to use Excel and Word onto, which you could use for e-mails and browsing, which you can let your kid play games onto and maybe connect to your home theater system to watch DVDs. Other niche markets exists but they are infacts niche markets.
I have no idea what you're trying to say here.

However, I believe Jobs still didn't catch the wave. To be popular, you should flood market with applications
I believe that's the responsibility of Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers!

pay developers to produce tons of applications in various fields
Who exactly does Microsoft pay to write third-party applications for them? Apple subsidized Metrowerks' existence for years to guarantee Mac development could continue, if that counts.

pay developers to produce games for your platform
Remember Halo?

flood the market yourself with free apps
Like the ones that came with Tiger but not XP?

Still Jobs tries to lock users in by trying to sell them services they won't buy, killing competition from ISV and missing important markets.
Yes. .Mac is truly the center of Apple's terrible failure as a company.

That's not the way he will make OS X platform more popular. Time will tell.
I get these kinds of arguments from mouth breathing armchair quarterbacks all the time.

Apple's business model is not the same as Microsoft's. Quit whining that it should be. Apple lives on margins, not volume. This means that their profitability is not tied to the economy for the most part. In contrast, MS releases a not-compatible-enough OS during a recession which requires people to upgrade their hardware, and business consumers avoid it like the plague.

As API philosophies go, Raymond Chen's "business customers are whiny babies who must be placated" philosophy is not even in force at Microsoft any more.

APIs change. Vendors of business apps are given fair warning by both Apple and Microsoft when changes come, and for the kind of money they charge their customers, their customers are entitled to believe those vendors will get with the times.

Edited 2008-04-22 16:52 UTC

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: 2