Finally, Windows officially supported by Apple

So finally it happened what I and a lot of other people had hoped for but not expected, that Apple gives official support for dual booting Windows XP on a intel based Mac.

At first when I read it I must confess I was wondering if it was some sort of delayed aprils fool. Apple had said before that they were not going to hinder anybody from running Windows XP on a Mac but they didn't seem the least interested in doing it themselves.

Previously I was happy to see that hackers had managed to make Windows XP run on Mac, but the solution didn't seem very user friendly and had a number of short comings. However it did at least prove that it was possible to do it and I think most were just hoping that a more polished and user friendly solution would come later. I think everybody expected such a solution to come but not so soon and definitely not by Apple!

Reading peoples comments about this on forums it is obvious that most are positive although a lot of people are also skeptical and worried. I think switchers and potential switchers are mostly positive to the news. But a lot of hardcore Mac users are worried that this will hurt Mac software development.

After all why would anybody bother to develop a Mac version of a piece of software when they can just tell their users that they can just boot into Windows and use the windows version?

I don't think it is as simple as that though. There are a number of factors that I believe would counter this trend.

1. Mac users are picky. They want software that looks and feels like proper mac software. If it doesn't they were quickly start complaining. Why else are companies so eager to write in their adds that their software is Cocoa based?


2. Allowing Windows XP to run on Mac, will likely increase Mac market share. This will make it more attractive for developers to write Mac software.


3. Supply and demand: this simple principle of the free market exist in the software world just as much as anywhere else. As long as there is demand for Mac software it will made.


4. Several software companies, e.g. Panic and OmniGroup are Mac only companies. That Mac suddenly can run XP doesn't change anything for them.

Let me elaborate some of the points. Many companies make products are are similar to what other companies offer. There might be just minor differences that make a user choose one software package over the other. Let us say company A and B both make Mac and Windows software. A knows that if it drops Mac specific versions of its software, Mac users are going to start buying B's software instead (since Mac users are going to care more about whether the software is native or not than minor differences in features). Thus they don't drop support for a Mac version.

Market Share
I have no idea how many times I have heard the phrase "Why develop for Mac when it has only a 5% market share. Windows has 95% so you can sell more of your software if you develop for windows".

This statement seems at first glance obviously correct. Except it makes a number of assumptions about both markets and your software which might not be true:

• Users in both markets are equally willing to buy software.


• The type of users in both markets are similar. Meaning they are interested in the same kind of software.


• The competition in each market is the same. Meaning there is the same amount of software products your product has to compete against.

All these assumptions are wrong or dubious at best. When it comes to the first assumption there is reason to believe it is not correct. Mac users have chosen to buy a computer that cost a lot more than a PC. Thus one is probably more likely to find people who don't want to spend much money on software or hardware in the PC camp. Hence Mac users are likely more willing to spend money on software.

The second assumption, we know were well is dead wrong. There is a disproportionate large group of graphics and video professionals in the Mac market. Thus if you make software that target those kind of people we are not looking at a 5% to 95% ratio anymore.

The PC/Windows market might be larger than the Mac market but it also has a lot more competition. There is way more software to choose from and many more companies competing in that market. Your software has to be unique or exceptional to stand out from the crowd in the PC/Windows market. In the Mac market you might be lucky and have no competition at all for your particular software. It doesn't matter how many potential buyers there is in the Windows market if the buyers always choose your competitors product.

The car analogy
That this even needs to be explained is surprising since in almost any other market people seem to understand that the size of the market is not all that matters. Let's take the dreaded car analogy.

The largest car market is for medium priced or cheap brands like Kia, Hyundai etc. More people can afford these kind of cars than people that can afford say Rolls Royce, so the market for these cars is much larger than the market for luxury cars. So why don't all car manufacturers target this market? Well that is how most think, just like in the software business. Thus the competition becomes fierce and the margins become very low. In the luxury segment the competition is less and thus the margins higher.

Thus there will always be companies that will find it worthwhile to target the mac market. As soon as some companies leave the market, competition will become less and somebody will always seize that opportunity to enter a market with reduced competition.

The future
Now one more important obstacle to switchers have been removed. Lack of software was perhaps the main obstacle. Now that is largely gone. The second major obstacle was price. Now since the intel switch, Macs have higher performance but the same price. Thus the price difference has been narrowed down. I think both these factors will contribute to growing the Mac market share.