The Mac Experience in Business & Home: Help, Tips, Discussion & Radio Show Notes

Living not far from Oz Park in Chicago, when reviewing the lopsided percentage of our web traffic using the Apple OS or at least not Explorer, I’m reminded of the cinematic refrain, “O what a world, what a world? Who would have thought a good little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness?”

Microsoft is not the Wicked Witch. Apple is not a good little girl. And yet it might make you think for a second when you look at our statistics, that Microsoft just doesn’t matter that much, at least not to our visitors, with only about 30% of you on the Microsoft platform, and fewer than 1 out of 10 using Microsoft Explorer on a given day.

And Microsoft does matter [sic]. Let’s venture the best single thing it has done in the past is to create a common platform that reduces the cost of direct and indirect compatibility for everyone. Direct compatibility is straight-forward, when we use common tools and knowledge to deliver goods on a common platform, the cost of production is lower for most participants.

As most of you know already, indirect compatibility is at least as important: you and I both design for Windows, and our software is likely to work together , too. Revolutionary , if not innovative. For innovative take James Brown ’s use of horns as rhythm, or ARPA, invented coincidentally at about the same time I was born, whose basic nature has not changed practically since, and on whose back all our data still rides. O transmission control protocol internet protocol! I love the smell of Internet in the morning. Don’t you?

There are those that complain fetchingly that Vista is a shadow of OS X, but who’s kidding whom? It may be the middle of Winter, but Spring is here. Let’s open our eyes. OS X is not ideal, there’s plenty of room for improvement, which means there’s still plenty of room for Apple, and others, to lead. And we must realize that Microsoft’s got grander goals than innovation these days. Microsoft is a great popularizer. Its OS is going into cars , for goodness sake, roll-over in your grave, Model-T! As such, the company (not Ford ) attracts a great deal of talented people who want to make an impact. Let’s accept the obvious similarities between Vista and OS X as sincere flattery , and focus instead on new battles. After all, over-all we’re still a long way from the absolute ease-of-use that’s marketed to us daily.

You can visit our blog, and others like it focusing on Linux, or Macintosh and open-source, and you can avoid Microsoft . You could do that yesterday, what’s different today is you can avoid Microsoft without increasing your business risk. The internet’s become vast enough you can define the parameters of your world without any single player, and every single player must struggle to stay relevant. This means if it ever was important to you, at least in the very alternate universe of this blog, the Mac vs. Windows conflict is over.

For people who used to care about what operating system their friends and neighbors used, there’s a greater game afoot to recognize and in which to participate: applying what we know about technology to engage and help those who know less . The Macintosh has never been at a better place to lead this endevor. We’re only one bucket of water away from melting, coming home, waking up, realizing at the very least it’s a different battlefield, and it just might smell like, victory.

PS: we support Microsoft products every day. From ubiquitous Office, priced for a single license above what some pay for a whole computer, through Outlook with which our Zimbra servers synchronize, Microsoft SQL and Windows 2003 Server, on which some of our managed services must depend (notably the BES), and more than 90% of our customers, who typically have some variety of both platforms. Only anachronistic to us are the enterprises who exclude Macs entirely. What’s up with that? Wake up and smell the iPod . Now that’s an alternate universe .

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 30th, 2006 at 3:04 pm and is filed under Apple/Mac, Microsoft, Opinions, Windows. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.