Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Software
Why Boot Camp doesn't mean the end of software for Macs
Several
readers in the comments to my earlier post are already proclaiming that the sky is indeed falling, predicting that Boot
Camp means that Adobe and every other Software manufacturer out there will stop "porting" their products to
OS X. This will not happen for two very easy to see reasons:
- Not everyone will install XP on their Macs, and therefore there is still money to be made selling software for OS X.
- Software companies like making money.
Also, a dual-booting environment is not the ideal work place. There's a lot of lost productivity in shutting down OS X to switch over to Windows XP to run Photoshop. As is, software manufacturers have the chance to make *more* money selling to both platforms. I mean, there is an entire Macintosh division at Microsoft creating Office for the Mac (which is not a port but a fully native OS X build of their software). Why? Because they make money off of it.
People made these same dire predictions when RealPC and VirtualPC and all those other emulators came out. They made the same predictions during that odd time in the 90s when you could purchase a PC computer on a card that you shoved into your Mac to dual boot. It hasn't happened yet (in fact there is more Mac software than ever before today because of Apple's growing marketshare) and it isn't about to happen. As long as Apple is in a state of growth, there is more money to be made selling to Apple and software companies will continue to do so.
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