Developers, Developers, Developers . . .

Last year I read a great article by John Gruber that refuted many of the myths about how Windows won the operating systems war ("The Art of the Parlay"). He argued that the reason that Apple lost was not price or their failure to license the operating system. Rather it was that Apple made Macintosh a complete break from the Apple II, while Microsoft made every effort to keep DOS programs working on Windows. It seems that Macintosh is still making this mistake. Over the past month I have been trying to port Lanovision to the Macintosh. This has been a frustrating experience. The biggest problem is that I do not have a Macintosh, and so have to beg my friends to let me borrow theirs', while giving them solemn promises that I will not harm their precious computer in any way. But it's also been frustrating simply because OSX Panther and OSX Jaguar are so incompatible. My friends are pretty much split on which system they have, so I have to build for both. A lot of the tools I have been using do not install on Jaguar. One can complain about Microsoft's slow release cycle, but I am glad that I only have one version of Lanovision for Windows and that it runs on every computer. Linux has the same problem. The wxPython download site has separate binaries for Debian, Fedora, Mandrake, and RedHat. That pretty much sucks all the fun out of creating a linux version. Both Apple and Linux providers are going to have to get their act together if they want to grab more market share. After all, as Steve Ballmer said, pleasing developers is the most important part of designing an operating system.