There was a time when the main attraction of Windows was the overwhelming choice of applications when compared with the Mac. No one really seems to have kept count (or at least I can’t find the data), but the number of apps for Windows platforms is alleged to be around 100,000. Well, that’s just great except, of course, that number has no meaning since no one really knows if it covers everything from Windows 1.0 to Windows Vista Ultimate Professional Business Edition. Microsoft’s excellent marcom team used that fuzzy and vague number to consistently drive home the message that Macs had no software.
Well, lookie here. It’s about 10 years later since Microsoft started that whisper campaign and today, I wonder if there is anything else other than familiarity (something not be discounted, of course) which attracts users to continue to use Windows. Microsoft’s desktop choices seem to have dwindled. People consistently use Microsoft’s own apps, IE, Works or Office, and the only third-party apps are all security software and the year-end tax applications. Here’s NPD’s annual top-selling PC titles for 2003 and 2005 (I couldn’t find 2004 but I doubt that it matters):
|
2003
|
2005
|
|---|---|
|
TurboTax 2002 Deluxe
|
TurboTax 2004 Deluxe
|
|
Norton Antivirus 2003
|
Norton Virus 2005
|
|
TurboTax 2002
|
Spy Sweeper Tech Bench
|
|
Norton Antivirus 2004
|
TurboTax 2004 Multi State 45
|
|
TurboTax 2002 MultiState 45
|
MS Office 2003 Student/Teacher
|
|
Taxcut 2002 Deluxe
|
Norton Internet Security 2005
|
|
MS Windows XP Home Upgrade
|
Norton Security Bundle
|
|
MS Office XP Student/Teacher
|
Norton Antivirus 2005
|
|
Taxcut 2002 State
|
Taxcut 2004 Deluxe
|
|
Norton Internet Security 2003
|
TurboTax 2004
|
Note that the list doesn’t include games (popular titles on the top 20 included Half-Life 2, WoW, and Sims 2) and specialized titles (Quicken). Ten years ago, Windows adoption was vastly driven by consumers seeking to install their Office applications on their machines at home because Microsoft allowed rampant piracy (remember the “People want to use the same software at home as they do at work” theme?) It strikes me that there is hardly any particularly must have application that Windows claims over the Mac. The ones that continue to develop, for example, Symantec and Intuit, offer pretty much the same titles as before (and in these cases serve to remind users that Windows is insecure). The times have changed and Microsoft missed the train completely – they didn’t realize that in a networked world, people can’t be administrators, and in an activation world, consumers wouldn’t go out and buy a new version of Office.
Nick Bradbury addresses suggests that people eschew desktop software are afraid to download and install applications:
When you try to download something, you’re presented with a security warning about how the software could potentially harm your computer. If you install the program despite this warning, your firewall often displays an intimidating dialog asking whether you really want to trust this application enough to let it talk to the outside world. It’s a one-two punch that’s driving away many would-be users of desktop software.
I don’t discount the fear issue, but I have to wonder what apps is he actually referring to. Fear certainly doesn’t seem to have affected users from downloading and using Skype and Firefox. The bigger question Nick should be asking is this: where have all the desktop developers gone?
In my humble opinion, the problem lies with Microsoft and their campaign against third-party solutions. If people recall, throughout the nineties, startups were dissuaded by VCs from developing any unique desktop applications for fear of being crushed by Microsoft. In addition, there was Microsoft’s own heavy-handed actions: using vaporware announcements to dissuade other solutions or exercising their monopolistic power to delay ISV development. Finally, Windows users, and I may be guilty of over-generalization, may have become accustomed to using software from Microsoft alone because of the precedence.
Look at the result – there are virtually no popular third-party desktop applications in use other than security (and that may soon end), finance, and tax. Developers have jumped off the VB/C# ship (at least on the consumer apps side) and moved on to PHP, Ruby, and, yes, Cocoa. If you look out into the future, the pipeline is even bleaker – that’s why Microsoft has had to create its own version of iPhoto and iCal. It remains to be seem that a UI upgrade and a couple of copied apps is sufficient to drive consumer adoption (other than the usual upgrades through hardware purchases) or be sufficient to draw new developers.
In contrast, there seems to be a lot of excitement and activity with Mac desktop application development. iLife has been the face of the rejuvenated Apple platform attracting consumers and developers alike. The exact number of apps is hard to nail down, but it seems to be anywhere from 2,691 actively used apps that Iusethis lists to the 16,777 that HyperJeff reports. In addition, there are community driven efforts such as Ironcoder, MyDreamApp, Sourceforge, CocoaDuel, O’Reilly Mac OS X Innovators Contest, iDevGames, independent of Apple driven development efforts.
Ok, I am not completely blown away by the end-result (the finalists of MyDreamApp were underwhelming), but find me recent consumer solutions as compelling and successful (and good looking) as NetNewsWire, Parallels, and Delicious Monster on the Windows side. Maybe it’s just that I have not been in tune with Windows applications since the days of Napster (the old one). Some time back Om Malik pointed out back mac users are early adopters and actually willing to pay for useful third-party software and the activity may be a sign that development community believes that too.
The lack of Microsoft consumer software development, Vista or no Vista, is equally telling. Unsurprisingly, CIO Magazine finds that adoption is slow. And this won’t help:
Windows Vista won’t be broadly available for another month, but already a cluster of security vulnerabilities has surfaced to dent the armor of what Microsoft describes as its most secure operating system ever.
Doh!
