Making software deliberately NOT cross-platform?

Great Debates
21

But to say “is it okay?” makes it a question of justice, of law or morality.

Excepting contractual obligations to continue providing a product to a particular market, what could possibly be wrong with withdrawing it? People who used to have it available on their platform still have the older versions available, and I can’t see any claim by them to be somehow owed newer versions. I can’t imagine how a company could have any sort of obligation to continue offering a product to a particular market. Why should a venal motive for a legitimate action make that action “wrong”?

Absent anti-trust considerations, I don’t see any basis for impugning Apple for doing this.

22

Not to flame, but it seems Apple is the best at this. Creating killer apps that (surprise!) only work on their overpriced hardware. They’re only starting to experiment with cross-platform now (with the iPod for Windows, but that’s hardware. iTunes isn’t available on PC.)

I love MacOS X and would love to use Final Cut Pro but, I can’t afford the thousands of dollars it costs to get a system that would run it. So, Apple has one less customer. Unethical? Probably not. Bad business? Maybe.

23

Would everyone be as approving if it was Intel purchasing Adobe and then announcing that they would be dropping support for the Mac versions? Personally, I have no problems with it either way, but there seems to be much less anger associated with the idea that Apple would do something in this vein, than if either Intel or Microsoft would be as … single minded about increasing their marketshare. If, we woke up tomorrow and saw the new avertising campaign, “Proudly presenting Photoshop 8.0 from Microsoft, availible for Windows OS only” would there be more outcry?

Are we as a group more tolerant of legitimate business practices than the average user?

24

Luckily, it’s very rare (if ever) that a hardware manufacturer can completely own a market by purchasing a single app, even if it is a very good one.

For every Final Cut Pro, there’s an Avid Express DV that will be happy to supply software to those who are on the “wrong” platform.

25

Yeah, right.

How DARE a computer manufacturer write applications for their hardware? And killer applications at that! A killer app is one that you’ll buy the hardware just to have. Apple are a hardware company that can make killer apps, and they do (surprise!). Their hardware costs as much as it costs, if you don’t like it, as you apparently don’t , you don’t have to buy it.

Have you ever heard of Quicktime? If it makes business sense, then they’ll do cross platform, same as any other company. And if you really want iTunes buy a Mac.

I find the loving MacOS X thing hard to believe, considering the rest of this post. Final Cut Pro will run on an iMac. iMacs start at $700. All the realtime effects in Final Cut Pro require something like an eMac. eMacs cost $1099. So we’re not talking about thousands of bucks, are we?

Apple has one less customer, but it doesn’t seem to be because of anything they’ve actually done.

26

I agree that I’d be miffed if Microsoft bought out Adobe and then dropped Mac support. But I also see another dynamic going on with that—the big huge mega company trying to squash the little underdog company that only has 5% of the computer users out there. There’s a whole different dynamic going on with Apple.

What Apple has done (buying a software company and then making it Mac-only) seems like such a drop in the bucket compared to the monopoly that the Wintel side has on things. They seem like a small company doing some small niche thing that will help them survive. They are affecting very few “regular” computer users.

However, if Apple bought out Adobe and then dropped Windows support, for instance, I would feel quite queasy about it. Adobe has broad appeal to many users, from many fields, and sells “consumer” level products. To cut off Windows users would not only be financially crazy, it would also seem somewhat mean-spirited.

But buying Final Cut Pro? I never had heard of it until recently. It was not on my radar screen. I daresay it’s not on most people’s radar screens. It’s a very expensive ($1000, I believe) professional video editing product, something that a small fraction of computer users are ever going to need.

There are plenty of professional products that are Windows-only, and will remain that way. Mac users are used to encountering software that their computers will not run. So, it isn’t surprising that Mac users are not wringing their hands in distress because once in a blue moon, Windows users discover that there is some software they can’t run.

So what’s the difference between Apple buying a cross-platform app and then making it Mac-only, and a company deliberately (for whatever reason) making a app Windows-only from the start? Not much of a difference, really. And, I can think of one product right off the top of my head that dropped Mac support—NetObjects Fusion. A consumer product, quite popular in the Mac crowd. I believe that NetObjects dropped it for financial reasons, but the fact remains, it once was available for Mac, and now it’s not.

And, as some have already pointed out, it’s expensive to do cross-platform programming. That’s the reason that many people give for there being so much Windows-only software. The companies see no reason (or cannot justify the expense) of making the software cross-platform. So why can’t Apple be able to do the same thing? (Not that anyone is saying that they can’t, exactly…)

You’re kidding, right? You want iTunes for PC? Why? Aren’t there enough PC-only MP3 players and freebie music softwares for you?

Apple bundles some freebie killer apps with their OS. Just like WinXP does. (Of course, I haven’t tried the freebie apps in XP, so I don’t know if they’re “killer” or not.) Why can’t WinXP make these apps cross-platform too? How dare they!

27

I don’t know if this has been mentioned yet because I am in a hurry and can’t read through the entire thread.

Apple didn’t buy the company that created Final Cut Pro, Apple IS the company that created Final Cut Pro. From the very beginning.

28

Kevin: I thought that too, but I recently read in a magazine that they actually bought it out from another company. The magazine could be wrong, for all I know. Anyone have any cites to determine what the Straight Dope is on this? (Hmm…maybe I could look it up myself. Off to Google go I…)

29

So, in other words, MS gets all the criticism just because they’re the big guy. Gotcha.

30

Oh, give me a break.

There is a different dynamic going on with small companies vs. large companies, and it isn’t about which platform the company caters to. It’s the way the company behaves itself. And we all judge a large, mega-powerful company a little differently than we do a small or medium-sized company. Usually, because the small or medium-sized company can’t afford to take any action on a very large or drastic scale. They just don’t have the funds. Also, there’s a “David and Goliath” thing going on between large companies and small companies.

Like I said, a different dynamic.

And, it’s not just the size or power of the company, it’s the amount of software they are affecting. If either MS or Apple were to buy out Adobe (for instance) and then make it single-platform, this would affect many, many computer users. And I’ve already said I wouldn’t be too happy about it. But one or two programs? For specialized, niche groups? Software that is used by only a small minority of computer users? Certainly this isn’t a big deal. And, as I have already mentioned, it’s done on the PC side ALL the time.

And, BTW, I did some checking on FCP. It does look like it was an Apple product from version 1.0. (I could dig up a link, but I’m too lazy right now.) Surely none of you think that Apple is obligated to make FCP cross-platform?

31

Since we are on the subject I would just like to mention how Microsoft bought Bungie Software a while back. Bungie software, for those of you who don’t know, used to make games for desktop computers. They were working on a first person shooter game known as Halo that was supposed to revolutionize the 3d-first person shooter genre in many different ways. It was supposedly going to have the most eye catching graphics to date, as well as the most interactive environment, a catching story, and many detailed and complex levels. Many people awaited the release of Halo as if their lives depended on it. Then Microsoft bought Bungie midway through the game development and scraped the release of Halo on desktop PCs completely. It has since been released on the Xbox gaming console, but it had to be dumbed down so to speak in order to be useable on the Xbox hardware, which is puny compared to most desktop PCs. That is not to say the game is ugly, it is still very entertaining, but the lose seems large considering all the media hype behind the original game.

On a side note Microsoft loses a significant amount of money on each XBox it sells. Somewhere around $200 I believe. They plan to lose several billion dollars throughout the XBox’s production. This is a result of Microsoft dropping the XBox’s price in order to compete with the Playstation 2 and the Gamecube. Some may wonder why Microsoft would want to lose money, but its because they plan to make it back in the future once they have established themselves in the game market. It is actually kind of scary when a company has so much money that it can enter into any market it wants to no matter how much money it will lose during the process. I mean, imagine a future with Microsoft toasters!@# :slight_smile:

32

Also, consider that developing, testing, and supporting any product on multiple platforms costs money. Especially doing all this for the PC platform, which has considerably more variation than the Mac platform. More variation, means more stuff to test, means more support people needed.

This could simply be a way to save money.

33

Wait… if Final Cut Pro was an Apple product from the beginning, what has changed? They just decided to discontinue the PC version? I don’t see how anyone can blame them for that.

34

Final Cut Pro wasn’t an Apple product from the beginning.

It was initially developed by Macromedia by Randy Ubillos, who was also the head of Adobe Premiere development. Apple purchased it from Macromedia and finished development, so it is now their baby, but they aren’t the biological father.

35

That’s right, DMC! I remember reading about Macromedia now!

I was reading in my Mac Addict magazine that Apple has bought several other software companies. (I’d have to dig out my copy of the magazine to see which companies, and I’m too lazy to do that now…) No mention of whether or not Apple intends to release Mac-only versions of their software, though.

36

No.

They are the unethical big guy who will use illegal business practices to crush their competitors.

Now that’s more like it.