Personal experience (was: Re: Good advice! (was: Re: [Ti] Windows compatable))

[Chris Olson]

On Jan 17, 2006, at 11:38 PM, Robert Ameeti wrote:

> Every computer a user bought would most always bring with it a new  
> version of their software. As often as users purchased computers,  
> they too wanted new versions of their software. Rarely would a user  
> reinstall their old version of software when they purchased a new  
> computer with a new OS.

Possibly, but I see situations like large government agencies, such  
as USDA, that run custom developed application suites on Windows 98  
and 2000.  In 2003 they updated to new Dell hardware and Windows XP.   
Their custom developed application suite continued to work perfectly,  
both client and server.

If that government agency was running Mac OS X Jaguar and  
transitioned to Tiger even on the same hardware, the chances are  
very, very good that their application suite would be broken due to  
changes in core OS X frameworks, and require further development cost  
to make it work again.

When you're looking at 130,000 seats running this software in every  
county in 50 states, and the fact that USDA hires a third party  
developer to write their custom software, the cost of Apple changing  
a framework and breaking their application is huge.  Microsoft, with  
the exception of SP2 for Windows XP has taken extreme pains to make  
sure this doesn't happen.  And with SP2, IT departments were warned  
to thoroughly test application suites before large scale deployment.   
I've never seen this with Apple - it just breaks without notice like  
the WorldBook application that shipped with an iBook that we bought  
for our daughter about three years ago.  It stopped working when she  
upgraded to Panther, and hasn't worked since unless she shells out  
the 40 bucks to mackiev software to upgrade to a new version that  
works with the updated libraries in OS X.

When you're talking large scale deployments, this lack of version  
increment reliability is disastrous.
-- 
Chris

-------------------------
PGP Key:  http://astcomm.net/~chris/PGP_Public_Key/
-------------------------