August 22, 2008, Mac and Linux failed, By Charles Miller

In response to a recent column, I received several email and in-person responses from Atención readers. In this case, they were all Mac users who took issue with my writing “Ignoring the ‘switch to Mac,’ and ‘switch to Linux’ critics who make up perhaps one or two percent of desktop users.”

I am thrilled they are reading Atención, but sorry they misinterpret that statement as an attack or put-down.

For the record, Macintosh is the best computer in the world to have if you are into graphic arts. Linux is a stable and more affordable server than is Windows. I own a Mac G3 and I also run Linux on one of my other computers.

But like it or not, Microsoft’s Windows operating systems are ubiquitous, the OS of choice for probably more than 95 percent of all end users. I am sure the preceding sentence will provoke more animated responses from some corners.

Remind a Mac user that OS-X has only two percent of the PC market and they are sure to counter with figures showing Mac sales up by 20–30 percent. Whoopee; so now their total market share might have gone up from two percent to two and a quarter percent.

Remind a Linux user that none of the various releases of Linux is even close to half of one percent of the overall market and prepare yourself to hear how Linux is growing so much in popularity that it is going to put Microsoft out of business next year (the same prediction its proponents have been making for a decade). Truth is that some market studies show Linux as low as 0.2 percent of the desktop market.

Mark Twain (and Disraeli) said, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.” I think that says it all. While competing systems such as Mac and Linux are perfectly good systems, they are really not “competing” systems at all because they have failed. They have failed to capture more than a tiny percentage of the computer market. Users of non-Microsoft operating systems may be loyal, as well as sometimes vociferous, but they are nevertheless a very small minority and likely to remain so. Even while complaining about Windows, more than 90 percent of consumers use it.

This is a fact, and a fact not necessarily determined by whether or not the best system won. History is rife with examples of superior technology that lost out to its inferiors in the market. An example that comes to mind is Betamax versus VHS video recorders. Among those who understand the mechanics of how a video recorder works, there is little disputing that Sony’s Betamax technology was far superior and far better quality than VHS. In spite of this, Sony lost the marketing battle and as a result, the inferior VHS became the worldwide standard and the superior Betamax disappeared.

The automotive industry offers up many examples of small companies that brought forth innovations, but for one reason or another failed to gain acceptance in the market. In this industry, some of the innovators were deliberately crushed by the big three.

I consider it fortunate this has not been the case in the computer industry. When IBM opened up the PC to cloning by other manufacturers, a new industry was created and the world changed as a result.

On July 3, 2008, when Apple took legal action against Mac clone-maker Psystar, that action was seen as a continuation of the closed-shop policy that has kept Mac from gaining market share.

In spite of the disorder (some call it chaos) in the free market, I vote in favor of letting the consumer decide.

Charles Miller is a freelance computer consultant, a frequent visitor to San Miguel since 1981 and now practically a full-time resident. He may be contacted at 044-415-101-8528 or email FAQ8 (at) SMAguru.com.