Why Wait Webs

Apple, developer of Mac OS X

Ok, it’s true. I am a big fan of Apple products. I do most of my work on a 24 inch iMac, and I find myself using my iPhone constantly throughout the day. I like these products because I’ve tried the alternatives, and I have found that for me, these are by far the best solutions. However, even though I’m a fan of Macs, I would never condone a website that doesn’t support PCs. I believe that right now, there is no reason why EVERYTHING computers can do shouldn’t be done cross-platform. That means OS X, and even Linux.

You see, applications and websites that are built from the ground up with these smaller platforms in mind don’t take any extra effort. Supporting an extra 12% or so of the market is easy to do, but yet so few developers do it. I came across an excellent article today about why game developers should support Mac OS X and Linux. But the concept extends beyond just game developers. Software developers of any kind, including website developers, should take heed to this information. Continue reading to see why.

The other day, I was very dismayed to find that the website of the Utah Food Bank denies access to Safari users, stating that they’re “Sorry for any inconvenience, our website is not compatible with Safari browser.” My first thought was, “why?” Safari is a fully standards-compliant browser, and there are VERY few instances where a page that displays in Firefox or Internet Explorer won’t also display and work perfectly in Safari. Even then, it is usually only a line or two of code that needs to be changed to support the third most popular browser in the world.

Problems like these are less common today than they were even a year ago, but people still don’t see browsers for what they are, or at least what they should be: different windows into the same Internet. The problem is all too frequent. Macs constitute almost 10% of the web-viewing public now, and I suspect an even larger percentage of the whole market. It has been proven that Mac users are much more likely to pay for good software than Windows users.

Tux the Penguin, lovable mascot to the Linux community.

When a well-developed application comes out for the Mac platform, it is not only purchased by enough consumers to justify any extra cost associated with development (which, as I mentioned, is usually small or nonexistent), it is also embraced by the entire community. Developers like Wolfire can testify to the fact that the Mac and Linux communities are much tighter than Windows users. As a result, news travels quicker, publicity is easier to obtain, and you will find even your Windows numbers going up as a result of supporting OS X and Linux.

What it all boils down to is simple. People misunderstand what is involved in supporting multiple platforms. Doing so from the beginning is a lot easier than converting after the fact. In fact, in most cases, it won’t take any effort. And as a result of that minimal to no effort, developers will find a huge amount of new users that they couldn’t possibly have acquired if their software wasn’t cross-platform. I’ll leave it to you to decide whether that’s worth it or not, but I hope you’ll come to the conclusion that, at least to me, is quite obvious.

I’ve been spending time writing a new blog series I intend to release, which will cover the basics of web design from the ground up. Unfortunately, this series is a big undertaking, much larger than I realized at the beginning. As a result you haven’t seen any published blogs for quite a while now, which I regret. I’m going to do my best to keep at least a post per week pace on this blog from now on, and I hope you will continue to read my posts as they come out. Thanks again for reading, and as usual please feel free to share your thoughts on the article in the comments section!