mac geekery

It’s not the end of the world.

I’ve read around the web for the past day or so, as well as on several of the mailing lists I read, and I see some very pessimistic viewpoints of this release and especially the announcement that this will be a part of Leopard. Some are saying that it could ease the transition to Windows because companies would say “well, you can dual-boot, can’t you?” and then not release software for the Mac. Others are saying it’s the first step into Apple using Windows as a desktop OS. Still others think Apple’s turning into a Dell and will start to ship dual-boot machines out of the factory.

Mac Software is Safe

Anyone that reiterates the first argument has likely never worked for a software company before. You don’t have the clout — ever — to force a consumer to change operating systems to run your program. Adobe will not make designers flip to Windows to run one program and then flip back to run another (be it theirs or someone else’s). Aspyr will not be ditching the game-porting business. Apple is simply not going to lose application ground to Windows because … Apple is not really competing with Microsoft with this move.

You see, Boot Camp will do nothing for the worse to Mac software. People love the Mac and the Mac OS and will keep using them. People will get Macs and dual boot (or virtualize) Windows for a transition, or for that One App That Won’t Port, but will spend a great deal of their time with the Mac OS because, well, it rocks. Apple is placing a bet — and it’s not a dangerous one — that when someone is given the choice of running a four-year-old version of Windows or running Tiger, that the user will try their best to remain in the better OS and use the decrepit one only when it’s necessary. Sure, Microsoft gets a sale of a four-year-old legacy OS out of the deal, but just once. After that, people will start to use Mac applications and then eventually phase windows out of their lives.

Very soon you’ll see the mantra: Windows at work, Mac at home. People will dual-boot a Mac Book Pro such that they’re using Windows at work, where it may be required, and then Mac OS X at home when they’re done abusing yourself. Slowly, surely, people will move to Mac OS X apps for work projects until they live and work in Mac OS X all the time.

In every way this looks very much like Apple’s new Classic. Apple is gently deprecating Windows with a compatibility mode. Rather than letting Windows take out Mac OS X by running it within Mac OS X, they make it very clear that it’s a whole other beast, move themselves aside, and then let you hurt yourself on your pretty new Mac.

Aspyr should not worry much. Just make sure the games run as fast in Mac OS X as they do in Windows (they have a way to benchmark this now) and people will prefer to not reboot and will pay for that. I see very few people turning their Macs into dual-boot Wintendos, simply because Windows is a hassle, expensive, and … inelegant. Three traits people do not buy Apple computers for.

Windows Winblows

Further, Apple will not start moving away from Mac OS X. That makes too little sense. Apple does not sell a better Windows box than Joe Vendor or Jane Contractor. Apple sells very nice, very high-end machines that do very special and unique things very well. Absolutely none of that is compatible with the windows way of thinking. Windows is about doing things the stupid way: piecemeal, roundabout, inelegantly. Windows is about gratuitous simplification of a concept, and then a complete reversal without changing the interface. Windows is about confusion and tons of clicky buttons you don’t use. Apple is a five-button remote with a magnetic holder on the side of the computer. Apple is a hiding dock and toolbar and a conspicuous lack of anything you won’t constantly use.

They’re fundamentally incompatible usage principals. People that think charts are work use Windows. People that think that work is moving things outside of their computer use Mac OS X. Those are the people that buy Mac hardware, not Windows users. Windows on an iMac is not a compelling proposition because Macintosh is the product, not Mac OS X and not the iMac. Macintosh is, historically, a melding of great hardware and a great OS to provide a complete experience. Macintosh is a way of working and is the whole schebang. If Apple moved to Windows you wouldn’t have Macintosh, you’d have an expensive IBM clone that wouldn’t sell.

The magic is Macintosh. It’s the tao of the computer world. It’s just enough computer and just enough human that you forget there’s a distinction. You use Macintosh, and it moves with you; you steer and it glides. Windows moves exactly when you tell it to and exactly as far as you told it to go. Windows is as productive as you are at any given moment. Macintosh enhances your productivity.

Who in their right minds would break that? Precisely no one.

Apple does not make Clones

Beyond the tao of Macintosh, at its core Apple Computer is and has always been a hardware company. Apple sold the Apple I without software. Apple sold the Apple II with an OS. The Mac, until the mid-90s, also came with only the OS. For the entire history of the company, Apple has made its money on the hardware. If Apple sells Macs that are turned into kick-ass Windows machines after-market then great! Let the masses buy Macs and make them into Windows machines. It’s much better than the alternative.

There are two ways this transition could have gone: Mac OS X for beige boxes or Windows for Apple boxes. Once Apple moved a shipping Mac OS X to the Intel platform it was just an inevitable choice between the two since both OSes would then be capable of running on either kind of machine (after some hackery). Given the many reasons that Apple shouldn’t sell its OS for beige boxes, the only viable choice was to bring Windows to the Apple box to calm the masses and offer a solution, and it’s a win-win solution, too.

You have to understand something about this decision. Sure, Microsoft gets some money for all the copies of its four-year-old software that will be bought and installed on the Mac, but Apple gets a hardware sale and gets Mac OS X out there for another user. Mac OS X is required to get Windows installed and booting, so it has to stay around. Instead of switchers having to have two computers on their desk, they can get used to the Mac hardware in an environment they feel comfortable in and slowly move over to the Mac OS X side of things.

If Windows didn’t run on the Mac, then Mac OS X would run on more beige boxes which means Apple loses out on a hardware sale. Apple, being a hardware company, would dislike that very much. It’s much better to buy the Mac and not use the Mac OS than it is to buy the Mac OS and not use a Mac.

The slippery slope here lies when someone then says that Apple needs to sell hardware any way they can and should start to push both OSes very loudly. This would be a large mistake. Once you break that tao of Macintosh then you have two pieces that have no place in the world other than to be used as incomplete tools. A Windows machine without the use of iSight. A Mac OS X with no way to activate Front Row. A remote useful only at the boot menu. Shattered pieces of a former balance does not a good experience make.

Lackluster experiences don’t sell, unless produced by the Wachowski brothers.

Apple would not desecrate the Mac with Windows out of the factory because it’s not the Kool-Aid they’re selling. The electric in their Kool-Aid is real, and they know it.