I wonder if you realize that because the Macs have a "tiny market share" (as you describe it) it's just easier (cheaper, too) to produce a re-chromed version of your software rather than writing a completely new interface just for those users. Also, it's a plus for the users coming from the PC market because they don't have to relearn the interface.
I wonder if you realize that because the Macs have a "tiny market share" (as you describe it) it's just easier (cheaper, too) to produce a re-chromed version of your software rather than writing a completely new interface just for those users.
Considering that I wrote that companies might think it's cheaper, I'm going to go with yes, I realize that companies might think it's cheaper.
Likewise, it's also cheaper for PC Manufacturers to sell me junk PCs loaded up with BloatWare, yet I buy Macs. Just as it's perfectly reasonable for company A to make a product that user B finds repellant, it's also perfectly reasonable for a company to make a Mac product that sucks, and it's equally reasonable for a Mac user to avoid it at all costs. Neither party is wrong in any sense, any more than WalMart is wrong for not selling full carbon mountain bikes or Ibis Cycles (a specialty manufacturer who lays their frames up by hand in the USA) is wrong for not rebranding a Chinese steel MTB at a $500 price point.
It's a plus for the users coming from the PC market because they don't have to relearn the interface.
This is not as sound an argument as the one we agree on. Replicating the PC experience with your Mac product works if you have all these PC users at the office and one day IT removes their PCs and replaces them with Macs. Or if you have a company with Macs and PCs and IT support costs show up in a report somewhere, but Mac user frustration with a poor interface is "off balance-sheet."
But if someone owns a PC and decides to switch to a Mac, it's because he explicitly doesn't like the PC experience. Replicate the PC experience on his Mac, and you may find that he switches products as well as computers.
The problem with the Mac way is that its all consuming. You completely need to reorient and reshape your world view to get past the uncanny valley of your typical Mac fan. No matter how much you polish your QT / Gtk/ Swing UI it will not pass muster. On the Mac platform native apps seem to dominate - eg textmate vs jedit/emacs/vim, omnigraffle vs visio, parallels vs virtualbox / vmware. Which suggests that if you are a cross platform company you might have to cede the "high end" mac purist to a Mac specific app.
There is also the case of the PC user being forced to use a Mac temporarily, i.e. because it is the only kind of computer available in their friend's house/school/etc. Before I owned any Apple products, I would experience this frequently, and be thankful for the programs that were a thin veneer over a windows program (that I was already familiar with.)
Surprisingly, Apple makes a product for people that want a Windows experience on Apple hardware, it's called Bootcamp. I am not trying to be witty: Things like Bootcamp, Parallels, VMWare, and so on exist so that people who want the Windows experience can have it without forcing companies like Skype to try to make their Windows applications pretend to be Mac applications.
I have Parallels. If you log into the Guest account on my machine and want to run Skype, I'd rather you use Skype for Windows and get exactly what you want than deal with something that is kinda-sorta Skype for Windows, but not enough to delight you as a user.
> it's just easier (cheaper, too) to produce a re-chromed version of your software rather than writing a completely new interface
Is it? Can you cite some sources?
I'd less native UIs to take longer, as more custom widgets and chrome is requires. Not to mention, the result is more likely to "feel wrong" since it's less likely to conform to that platform's conventions.
