phil ringnalda

Interesting take on the Opera versus Apple browser flap, from John Gruber:

[T]he Mac’s primary purpose is to be better. Windows’s primary purpose is to be ubiquitous.

Which makes perfect sense, although I’d never thought of it that way. If Apple would have had a decent plan to conquer the world back in the mid-eighties, they might have been able to slug it out with Wintel (which had unquestionably worse offerings at the time, but at the time it wasn’t Wintel so much as IBM, and Apple chose not to fight IBM/Microsoft for the business market, and here we are), but at this point there really isn’t any reason to believe that the masses will suddenly decide that even though they sort of know how to use Windows, and it’s what they have at work/school/library/cafe/wherever, that they should just buy a much more expensive Mac. Stoned Switchers who can’t hang on to their homework or not, Windows isn’t that hard to use, especially if you know something about it and nothing about the Mac, and the Mac isn’t all that simple and bulletproof anymore: I’ve seen the sort of questions that people are asking about OSX when they get into trouble, and they make allocating IRQs for Windows (something I haven’t messed with for a couple of years, and don’t miss) look simple by comparison. So if the Mac can’t be more common, or more well-known, or easier (sorry, but XP is pretty damn simple to use), all that’s left is brand image and better software. Apple’s all over image and design, but better software is where John surprised me. I would have thought that cross-platform was a good thing for the Mac: “you can use the same familiar programs you’re used to (and never mind that they don’t close like you expect, and their menu bar looks like it belongs to the OS instead of the program).” Turns out it isn’t:

When the same software exists for both Mac and Windows, Apple has no advantage…. To be better requires Mac-only software that works better than its Windows counterparts. Thus, Mozilla offers no advantage whatsoever to Apple.

I did realize that the only reason I might get a Mac was because NetNewsWire and EspressoBlog are Mac-only, but I hadn’t really realized that kick-ass Mac-only programs were really the only thing Apple had going for it. Microsoft needs to make new versions of programs that are different enough from the current version that you’ll have to upgrade, Apple needs to make new programs that are good enough that you’ll buy an expensive computer just to run them. That’s an interesting situation.