It’s all about where you draw the line

Just looking at my site statistics (using the really amazing Woopra, which you should check out if you have a web site), and I noticed the OS breakdown for visitors to my site. Here’s the top four systems:

• Windows XP: 38.3%
• Windows Server 2003: 36.9%
• Mac: 11.7%
• Windows Vista: 7.47%

Beyond my mild annoyance that they break down every type of Windows, but lump all Mac OSes under one number, I was a bit amused by the fact that Macs outnumber Vista. Two variants of Windows at least five years old collectively outnumber Microsoft’s new flagship product ten to one.

Of course my little slice of the web isn’t going to perfectly reflect worldwide statistics, but it is one more piece of anecdotal sadness for the Regents of Redmond. I saw an article a while back (probably Joel Spolsky) suggesting that if MS sat back and did nothing but bleed money keeping themselves open, it would take then ten years to go out of business. Despite that impressive buffer, they had better get on the ball and try something new — ’cause whatever they’re doing, it’s not working.

My first thought is: get rid of Ballmer — the man’s a bully. Microsoft has used its near-monopoly like a bludgeon, but as time passes they are once again more and more at the mercy of market forces and individual consumers. Clearly he is having a hard time adjusting to that reality.

Or you could just say that Vista is Microsoft’s Copland… but then, I always thought Windows Me was Microsoft’s Copland. Heh. Showoffs.

Of the members of my immediate family, the majority of us are Mac people. Of the exceptions, one brother has a Windows machine because he likes games Pretty much all he does on it is play Everquest or online poker. Another brother has used Windows for years because obviously it’s a better computer. <Insert Mac stereotype(s) here. They’re not “real” computers. They’re too expensive. There’s no software for them. They’re no better nor more stable than Windows, just different….> If he ever overhead me talking to my Mac-using brother about some issue we were having, he would laugh and mock the fact that our “amazing computers” were actually having problems.

Recently, however, he broke down and bought an iMac, because his kids are in school now, and the school apparently is all-Mac. Shortly after this (right around Christmas) he and I had a conversation in which I revealed to him the startling fact that, yes, he can buy Microsoft Office for OS X, and that in fact, Yes, he can actually run Windows on the thing if he so chooses. He asked me a lot of questions, and I was happy to answer them.

He has installed Windows XP on the Mac, using Boot Camp — primarily to run Microsoft Money¹. Since our conversation at Christmas, he has called me a few times for tech support.

Here’s the ironic part:

Every call has been a question about how to get this or that working in Windows. As far as I can tell the OS X part has been relatively trouble-free, because he hasn’t called me about any of that.

Welcome to the fold, Brother.