Ants on the Melon
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I realize that this is pretty geeky, but whenever I hear news like this it just makes me happy.

Market share for Apple’s Mac OS X continued to grow again last month and is now up to 4.35%. While this is no huge number, its the trend that I am happy about. Windows XP also gained, but it looks like as people retire their Windows 95/98/Me/2000 machines that a portion are dropping Windows altogether. Mac OS gained every month except February last year, and it will be interesting to see what next months statistics look like after all those people who got iMacs for Christmas get online.

With more people using Apple computers, the more demand there will be for software for Mac OS X. The more software there is for Mac OS X, the more people who will be able to switch over. And that means fewer tech support calls from that family/friend/pet who reminds you every so often that his computer is running slow and he thinks he has a virus.

In other news, Firefox also closed out the year strong with almost 1 in 10 people using it to browse the web. Firefox gained almost 4 percentage points over the course of the year, and Safari rose from 1.66% to 3.07%. Internet Explorer usage is now down to around 85% from 90% at the beginning of the year.

Unlike many people, I’m not in the camp that hopes Microsoft goes bankrupt. I want web developers to be forced to recognize that Internet Explorer is not the only web browser. Its extremely frustrating to visit a site that won’t work on anything except the latest version of Windows and the latest version of Internet Explorer.

For an online store, this sort of thing is just plain bad business. This is like Wal-Mart refusing to let a customer into the store if he was born in January or February (about 16% of a year). By creating a site that 15% of the people on the Internet can’t even go to (the non-Internet Explorer crowd), online vendors who choose these technologies are basically doing just that and blocking potential customers. Find an owner of a brick-and-mortar store and ask them to close their doors for two months each year, and then see if they understand the analogy.

Web Developers: One of the major (only?) benefits to writing a web application is that you start off with a universal platform. If you want to write something that only works on Windows, then why not just write a freakin Windows application to begin with? You might as well save yourself the trouble of dealing with HTTP, sessions, cookies and all the other crap that comes with the bag-o-glass that is web development.

Whew, I feel better.