inluminent

John Gruber’s done it again. He posted a great little article on why it doesn’t matter that Opera is thinking about stopping development on the Macintosh platform. Here are two snippets:

…the Mac’s primary purpose is to be better. Windows’s primary purpose is to be ubiquitous. Both platforms have been successful in achieving these goals.

and

Opera is exactly what Apple doesnít need: exactly like the Windows version, but six months behind.

Phil then comments on John’s remarks on his weblog:

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.

And I’ll throw in my 2 cents:

I don’t know that just having Mac-only software is good enough for Apple to be successful at being ‘better’ in that in today’s open-source world, the majority of great Mac-only applications are being copied and built for the Wintel platform pretty much right after they come out. Sure, there isn’t a BBEdit for Windows (but arguably there are “good enough” alternatives out there). Same goes for most of the other software out there.

Mac-only won’t help Apple gain marketshare, but rather Apple deciding what markets it wants to be the leader in and their helping those software providers build Mac OS X tools will help Apple gain rather than lose marketshare. My company is pretty much going to dump the Macintosh in the coming year or two I think, primarily because the tools that we’ve decided to build our company on have dropped the Macintosh and the software runs well on Windows 2000. So, we’re switching, but its not the kind of switching I’d like to see.

The Apple rep that sells to us knows of the problem and there’s nothing he can really do. It’s more of a corporate decision on Apple’s part (in my opinion) to not push third party developers really fucking hard to build OS X apps. I’m not talking about Adobe (who did Apple a favor by embracing OS X, btw) but rather the bigger more enterprise priced applications out there. There’s just no interest in OS X from those companies.

Sure Apple might have decided they want to own the consumer market, and bravo to them if that’s what they’ve done, but I don’t see them really trying to own it yet… they don’t have a great entry model computer (at least not one that they really market the shit out of).

Mac-only apps won’t save Apple today, but might help them in the long run.

But, I’ll agree that Opera doesn’t matter on the Macintosh.