Boot Camp: Best Article Yet, esp on Software

[Seacrest]

IronMac Wrote:
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> Why is he going with MacBooks? What are the apps
> that they are running? Is he aware that they will
> still have malware on the Windows' side?


You say this as if
a.) you have have the slightest inkling of what it really means,
b.) Dell laptops are somehow immune to Windows "malware,"
c.) professional I.T. departments are not aware of the malware risks.

(yes, I realize "professional I.T. departments" is somewhat of an oxymoron)

[LaserKun]

It is the System... of course, the quality hardware just adds to the overall experience, but if it were not for OS X, the Mac would not be the Mac. I started with Macs with version 3.xx (maybe 4.xx, can't remember), and it was much better than what was available at that time, DOS, etc., but through version 9.xx, I often called even the Mac a piece of junque!! All it takes is spending too much time trying to get things to work right, crashes, extension conflicts (remember ConflictCatcher?), and I felt like throwing my Mac out the window many times under the systems from 4.xx through 9.xx. Then came OS X! I started with it when it first came out 5 years ago, now running 10.4.5 on my Pismo, wife's iBook G3 800, daughter's iBook G3 700, and hardly any problems at all...

What can I say: I just want the thing to do what it is supposed to do - OS X lives up to that for me, with very little annoyances. Yes, give people the chance to run Windows on their Macs, I for one am surely not worried about that comparison!

[IronMac]

Looks like Mr. Gruber just dissed a whole bunch of Mac mini users:

"but Apple doesn’t really want customers like that anyway — people who shop primarily based on price are generally lousy customers."

[IronMac]

BigGuynRusty Wrote:
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>
>
> There are three apps that are not on the Mac, and
> never will be, and yes, he understands about
> malware, and all the other crap.
>
>

And, now, thanks to Boot Camp, they never will be.

Ok, so, let me get this straight...they're going with more expensive hardware to run Windows' apps in an environment that will probably need just as much support? Or is there less support because, aside from these three apps, everything else will be run on the Mac side?

What about additional licenses/costs for those new Mac apps? (I'm assuming here that they were initially all Windows, right?)

[IronMac]

LaserKun Wrote:
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>
> Yes, give people
> the chance to run Windows on their Macs, I for one
> am surely not worried about that comparison!

I'm not worried about that comparison at all! I'm just worried that there's nothing to hold Mac software developers to the platform now.

[LaserKun]

Think this through, IronMac; there is absolutely no way that people like me will be buying non-OS X software! I will not use the inferior system, case closed. What I really think will happen is that more Windows users will be buying Macs now, and along with that, more Mac software.

OS X developers had better get ready to ramp up their development teams.

[Seacrest]

IronMac Wrote:
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> Looks like Mr. Gruber just dissed a whole bunch of
> Mac mini users:
>
> "but Apple doesn’t really want customers like that
> anyway — people who shop primarily based on price
> are generally lousy customers."


"primarily" is the key word here.
Low-end Mac mini buyers are more price sensitive than buyers of higher-priced Macs, but they still had the good sense to buy Macs in the first place. They are focussed more on value than price, and perhaps just (relatively) poor or students.

[IronMac]

Ok, I've quickly read through Mr. Gruber's piece and there is only one area that sticks out to me:

"The fear that Windows-on-Mac-hardware implies the eventual death or marginalization of Mac OS X is baseless. Sure, third party developers could start using “Just boot into Windows” as their answer to questions regarding Mac support, but this is no more likely to be popular or successful than it was for developers whose OS X strategy was “Just use Classic”. "

My response:

The strategy of "Just use Classic" didn't work because developers had no viable choice. They couldn't develop for a rapidly shrinking and, in the end, ultimately doomed marketspace because Apple was going to eliminate that space in the drive to establish OS X.

Now, a developer can say "Just boot into Windows" because not only will there be a possibility that the end-user will have a copy of Windows lying around and be able to install it on their Intel Mac (btw, note that Mr. Gruber says "And for many of these people (i.e. the enthusiast/nerd/”into computers” market) using Boot Camp is free because they already have Windows XP installation discs sitting around.") but the app can also be marketed to a much bigger market than just the Mac market. So, what if they tick off a few Mac OS X-only holdouts? There's a big juicy market that's about 23-24 times bigger in the Windows' realm! (Macs now have 4%...versus 90%+ which is how much bigger? You got it..22.5 times almost.) Even gaining the same percentage marketshare of that space that they have in the Mac market will give them an automatic doubling of sales. That's no small change!

[N-OS X-tasy!]

Gruber may be intelligent, and though I confess to enjoying the gist of his message, these two statements leave me wondering about the validity of his perceptions:

But from the other side, Apple is confident that most Windows users who give Mac OS X a shot are going to prefer it — again, much in the same way that most long-time Mac users preferred Mac OS X to the old Mac OS.

Anyone who spent any time at all on the dealmac forum during the first two years of OS X's release will remember the massive groundswell of resistance to the new OS. There were innumerable posts from folks who swore they wouldn't give up OS 9 until there was literally no other option. A few of these folks still run OS 9, more than five years after the release of X.



In the same way that Mac users found themselves in a race to go Classic-free after switching to OS X, and that running apps through Classic was viewed from the get-go as something to be done while holding one’s nose, so too will Windows be viewed in the post-Boot Camp world.

One reason many users resisted the move to OS X was because some OS 9-only piece of software or another that they simply couldn't live without was not available for X and they didn't want to take the performance hit of running it in Classic. Many users cling to OS 9 to this day for the same reason. This is especially true in professional environments.

I hope Gruber's right, but his revisionism serves no good purpose.

[IronMac]

Seacrest Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
> Low-end Mac mini buyers are more price sensitive
> than buyers of higher-priced Macs, but they still
> had the good sense to buy Macs in the first place.
> They are focussed more on value than price, and
> perhaps just (relatively) poor or students.
>

I don't know...if you read through Apple's mini page they used the following:

"The most affordable way to Intel Core, iLife ’06, and Front Row starts at $599."
"Power has never been this economical"
"Mac mini makes it easy and affordable to work with digital photos..."
"simplicity and reliability of Macintosh without a lot of extra expense"

http://www.apple.com/macmini/

You say tomato...I say tomato. Mr. Gruber simply says that they're lousy customers.