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Is Windows Losing Ground?
Rimbo asks: "I work for a small company developing wireless mesh networks to (among other things) give broadband access to large areas where a single access point can't cover the whole place. Since we're small, we made the mesh networking application for Windows, intending to support other platforms later. To our surprise, our first beta site complained: 'Most of our residents use Apples.' Has anyone else experienced anything similar? Is Windows losing its dominance to the point where small shops must consider multiple OS support to get business, either through Java, 'web services,' or cross-platform toolkits like Qt?" With the number of IE vulnerabilities, macro viruses, exploits and other such annoyances over the years, is this really that surprising?
No!
Boy, glad to see that unscientific guesswork from extremely limited statistical samples is alive and well! ;)
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
I think its pretty safe to say windows is not losing much ground, especially when related to an isolated incident where someone encountered a majority of Apple systems. I could use similar logic when walking into my schools labs, but the hypothesis falls apart when I goto studios running primarily Windows, or large businesses. The editor's comment is pretty much pure conjecture, even if there has been a minor budging towards OSX.
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
He didn't say it was "islands of people like Acidic Diarrhea." In fact, I would hazard a guess that anyone willing to present themselves with that name would not be representative of anything of much interest to the world in general.
Your argument might be valid for Linux but I don't think it's helping Apple.
And your argument seems to be "*I* wouldn't do that, so nobody would."
That the plural of anecdote is not data.
Yes, I believe Linux is gaining ground. But I don't believe our individual stories are going to necessarily be representative of the entire industry.
After all, many (most?) or us are here because of Slashdot's pro-Linux bias.
Just something to keep in mind.
- Neil Wehneman
My legal education, in nifty podcast format
No, it is not. My argument is that people don't base decisions as to whether to buy hardware that costs over $1000 on just seeing it at their neighbor's house.
No, your argument is that YOU wouldn't base such decisions on such events, and are extrapolating that to other people. Well, here's a news flash for you, ego-boy:
NOT EVERYBODY THINKS LIKE YOU!!!
Do you get it yet? There really, truly, are people who would go out and buy a $2000+ G5 because they saw their friends using it and thought it looked snazzy. You're clearly not one of them, and you may not even know any of them, but they do exist! Plenty of people in this world base decisions on things other than cold, hard, numbers, things like cool looks, friends' words, and even just plain impulse.
So why don't you step out of your basement (or bathroom, as the case may be...) and take a look at the real world every once in a while? You might meet some people who (*gasp*) have opinions other than your own (and my own, and those of anyone else on Slashdot). It will be good for you.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
In general, the replacement cycle for Macs is two to three times longer than that for PCs. Part of this difference reflects the difference in price (folks hold onto expensive stuff longer than cheap stuff), and part reflects product quality (Macs don't crap out on you as fast as PCs do). Also, there tends to be an active market in upgrade products for Macs that extends their useful life (and sales of upgrade products don't contribute to a product's market share).
Finally, market share numbers are skewed because people may own or use more than one machine: one at home, one at work, maybe a machine at home just for work stuff, and maybe a laptop. If you do the math you will see that the market share to seat share ratio is roughly proportional to the replacement cycle ratio. While you may be able to safely ignore 3% of the market, could you afford to ignore 10%? What if that 10% were the top 10% that controlled the purchasing decisions for another 40% of the market?
If someone has several machines at home and one of them doesn't work with some home oriented product, even if the other machines work, the person is likely to raise a fuss about the one non-working machine. As a business, you can't really afford to alienate the guy with three PCs and one Mac. Even though he is perfectly able to run your Windows-only product, he may well like the Mac better, or he may just be offended because you are foreclosing a choice that is rightfully his. Under any circumstance, the folks that have several machines are, in general, a more affluent market and you should cater to them (they have more money, which probably means they have better jobs, which probably they have some buying power at work as well as at home)
Even Microsoft is concerned about making products for the Mac. Some of that might be cover for anti-trust lawsuits, but most of it is probably that they know a lucrative market when they see one, and they know that the folks that can afford Macs have lots of money, which probably means that they are important people. If you get them using MS-Office at home, on their Mac, they will be more likely to recommend MS-Office as the standard platform at work, where all the peons in the cheap seats are forced to use it on a Dell or Gateway running Windows.
Yes there are a lot of non-windows machines out there. You have made 2 big mistakes:
1. Only now after the product has been made are you asking questions that should have been asked at the earliest stages.
2. By using open standards, it wouldnt matter what OS your customers use, they could just plug it in and go. That way your solution would work for any OS that also adheres to open standards.
I work for a wireless company in a development group. All the programmers are hard core C++/Java/UNIX people. Of the 11 developers in my group, 7 now have Macintosh machines running OSX, and two others have Linux machines.
Is this indicative of a shift in general society? Nope. We all know that geeks jump first. But once all the geeks are on Macs and Linux, the non-geeks will get a different answer when they ask what kind of computer they should buy. "Windows" won't be the answer anymore, and that's good for the theory of a heterogeneous network being stronger.
- Vincit qui patitur.