Why write Mac software – and why Mac users love to get the best
Yesterday I read one of the funniest presentations I have read in a long time. In his blog Call me fishmeal, Mac software author Wil Shipley has put up a presentation he made at WWDC. It’s called “How to Succeed Writing Mac Software (Or, How to Make a Zillion Dollars and Not Lose Your Soul)”. You can download a pdf of the presentation, or an mp3 Wil recorded later so people can listen to it.
Wil argues why you should write Mac software and not Windows. “Mac people use their computers. Windows people put up with their computers.” Wil claims that Windows users just go with the market leaders and use only three apps (Word, IE and iTunes!), and that they are afraid to install software because “Every piece of software junks up their desktop, makes their machine less stable, and opens holes for virus.”
Technorati Tags: safari, netnewswire, rss, software, wwdc
I guess the WWDC (Apple’s developer conference, held every year in June), is THE place to say things like that to the audience, and getting away with it.
Then I read the article “RSS Readers: Narrowing Down Your Choices” at Earthweb. Brian Livingston has checked which RSS readers people use, and My Yahoo is at the top of the list with a 59% marketshare. The list is made by checking which RSS readers people use to read RSS feeds from FeedBurner.com.
But it turns out that My Yahoo gets a very high number because My Yahoo has a number of default feeds set up: “So these results are skewed somewhat by these popular feeds”, says Eric Lunt at FeedBurner.
When taking away the 10 most poular feeds from the list, these are the top 3 RSS readers:
- Bloglines: 19.49%
- NetNewsWire: 10.07%
- iTunes: 9.53%
IpodderX is number 10 with 1,77% marketshare, Safari number 14 with 1,75% and Apple CFNetwork Generic client has a 1,21% marketshare.
But what is this? Isn’t Apple’s market share around 3,5 to 4%? Take a look a the numbers again. Add together NetNewsWire (which I highly recommend), IpodderX, Safari and Apple CFNetwork GC, and you get 14,8%. Which proves Wil’s point when he says that “Mac users are organized and connected, love upgrades, love to get the best”. Mac users have started to use RSS because it’s clever and saves you lots of work.
BTW, the statistics for this site, is NetNewsWire at 44%, Bloglines 18%, Safari 12%. Rest is My Yahoo and other readers.
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