Windows Vs Mac software crossover bias to Mac?

Posted by Paul Korm
Dec 1, 2014 at 06:51 PM

That’s an interesting view—I would never have had that impression. I live in both the Mac and Windows worlds and I buy lots of software. The only “software begun on Windows” that migrated to Mac that I can think of are the pieces of Microsoft Office. Word and Excel were very early on developed for Mac as well as Windows. Later came Outlook to OS X and later still OneNote. Outside of the Microsoft domain I wouldn’t be able to say there is much crossing of the Windows-Mac barrier.

Maybe I shouldn’t but I’m excluding Java things like TheBrain because porting from Windows to OS X is **relatively** easier for Java apps.

I do agree with Simon in the other direction: Mac apps rarely get ported to Windows. Scrivener is a major outlier, and there it took years before Keith Blount was satisfied with the Windows version. Tinderbox’s internals are so hooked into OS X that I wonder if a Windows version would be any match for what was done in OS X.

I don’t know that it’s a matter of one group of developers “bending over backwards” and another not. Developers collaborate with one another, but that kind of platform-preference group strategizing doesn’t really exist in the software business. I doubt anyone is thinking “well, I’m not going to help those Windows guys over there; I don’t care if they helped me”. What you see is a combination of market forces (money) and developer time.

Simon Bolivar wrote:
It’s my impression that Software begun on Windows are often made for Mac
>afterwards, yet it doesn’t seem to work the other way around, am I
>wrong? As a Windows user who doesn’t have access to Tinderbox etc
>because it is one of many Mac Softwares that don’t crossover to Windows
>it irritates me that so many Windows software developers seem to bend
>over backwards to help Mac Users. Thanks.