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Comment by actf | Hacker News Reader

I've never really understood the Windows/Mac analogy here. I think the main reason many people end up using Windows over OSX, or any other OS, has always been the availability of software. People use Windows because there is a lot of really good software that just isn't available on other platforms. Granted this is slowly becoming less of an issue now that OSX is gaining some ground, but it is still an issue for a lot of people.

If you compare iOS to Android, I think you see the same pattern. One of the reasons the iPhone is so popular is because of the apps, many of which just aren't available on Android. Even when an app is available for Android it often feels like a second class citizen, or an after thought - just as it often does on the Mac.

When I look at the mobile world in this light it seems like we should be comparing iOS to Windows and Android to OSX, but then again maybe I'm just reading into the analogy too much.

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You have to go back further in time for the analogy to make sense. Which platform was Powerpoint originally written for? Seems crazy that it was written for the Mac now that it's so associated with Windows and Microsoft. Even the fact that Adobe Photoshop was a Mac program first seems a bit unlikely as Adobe has been treating the Mac as a second class citizen for a while.

They're basically predicting the same early lead then loss of market share, then mindshare will happen again, not saying that it's already happened.

Also, note that the "Mac users spend more money on software" argument was very popular, even (or indeed, especially) in the bleakest of dark times for the Mac platform. Meanwhile, software that was given away for free and/or relied on network effects (Skype, Firefox, various P2P things) generally started and focused on Windows, because that's where the people were.

Do you really think that? I used to be a Windows user, then switched to Mac by way of Linux a few years ago. Now I have to use Windows at work and I have a really hard time finding good Windows programs besides Office.

The Mac selection frankly feels way better and bigger to me. I would go even further and claim that the main advantage of OSX over Windows is the app selection in both quality and quantity!

By citing the parent comment and modifying the emphasized part I can correct it:

"I think the main reason many people end up using Windows over OSX, or any other OS, has always been the knowledge of software."

Like how to do X in software Y, or what software can one obtain to do task Z.

Probably the Mac App Store changes that, and certainly the perception of it. Also even timid users are much more inclined to go and ask stuff on the Internet, and not solely rely on their inner circle.

Canonical knew that even before the App Store singularity and tried to design a simple user-centric application finder in Ubuntu, alongside the very technical Synaptics package manager. Also they tried to push users to ask questions on forums on the very first page Firefox displays.

Yes, it's absolutely still true, although certainly to a lesser degree than a few years ago. The obvious easy example is games. The number of AAA games available on OSX is still tiny compared to what's available on Windows.

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