Windows: Not the New Classic
The normally insightful John Gruber of *Daring Fireball* is letting is Mac fanboyism run away with him. In his [most recent posting](http://daringfireball.net/2006/04/windows_the_new_classic) he looks at Apple’s inevitable [Boot Camp](http://www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/) software and compares it to running Classic in MacOS X: “running apps through Classic was viewed from the get-go as something to be done while holding one’s nose, so too will Windows be viewed in the post-Boot Camp world.”
But John! There’s one important difference. Apple was very clear that Classic was going to go away soon. “Move to OS X!” was the message, “Classic will stop working someday!”. As much as you and I would like to dream, Windows isn’t going away soon. Mac developers had to move to OS X whether they liked it or not, because if they kept developing for Classic, their audience will shrivel to nothing in a few years.
The fear that Windows-on-Mac-hardware implies the eventual death or marginalization of Mac OS X is baseless. Sure, third party developers could start using “Just boot into Windows” as their answer to questions regarding Mac support, but this is no more likely to be popular or successful than it was for developers whose OS X strategy was “Just use Classic”.
So let’s say that I’m a development company that just spend a million dollars developing some kind of program for Windows (90-something percent of the market). This program will also work on Macs (under 10 percent of the market). Why would I spend a bunch more money to develop something for the Mac? They can just run it in Windows. So it’ll look like shit. What do I care? I’m a Windows developer. I’m used to things looking like shit. The Mac people won’t like it, but if they want to use my program, they’ll put up with it.
There are lots of developers that are only grudgingly supporting the Mac. You can tell which ones they are: they’re already making crappy Mac programs that look and act like Windows (like this one , which I played with recently and was very unimpressed). I’d guess that most of them will stop supporting the Mac and tell people “just run Windows”.
User: Can I buy a Mac version of your software?
Company: No, we don’t support the Mac.
User: But I need to use your software!
Company: Your Mac can run Windows, just run our software in Windows.
User: I don’t like Windows.
Company: Boo frikkin hoo.
This is quite a gamble. Steve’s betting that virtualising Windows will increase market share (and mind share) faster than developers jump ship. I’m not sure this will happen.
Windows is not Classic. Everyone knew Classic’s days were numbered. Windows will be sticking around for quite a while.