This is very interesting. From a new study released at Macworld CreativePro Conference & Expo:

quote:
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The Mac is clearly the operating system of choice for design and production firms, with 82% of all respondents naming the Mac as their primary OS. However, adoption of Mac OS X remains slow; only 17% of those polled have upgraded their systems to the new OS.
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Oops.

Link

Oh, I'm not too surprised by the numbers. Apple's numbers were certainly inflated and online polls are quite unreliable (particularly due to the Zealot factor). At the end of the day, changing platforms is not an easy thing to do. The benefits of protected memory, etc., can be had for much cheaper on the Wintel side if that's the main drawing card. The reasons for switching to OS X, or even staying with the Mac, have been somewhat blurred due to the entrenchment of the Mac in certain segments (design and production). The Mac "always was" in certain places and it was no help that the OS 9 lineage was intentional left to stagnate. It's no wonder that some Mac users say it's just six of one, half a dozen of the other and that it all depends on what you know and use. One interface/system is a good as another, etc. We probably all should have been bitching and screaming ten, twelve years ago. This situation reminds me of the words of Benjamin Franklin. After the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Franklin, when asked what had been wrought, responded, “A republic, if you can keep it.” It's the Mac if we can keep it.

What OS X has done, at least in my mind, is bring to the forefront the things that made the Mac better and the philosophy and principles behind those things. This is something that was certainly lost at Apple even before Jobs II. They rested on their laurels and the laurels were strong enough to rest on for a while – but only for a while.

It's not about poll numbers. It's not about Unix. It's not about underpinnings. It's not about Jobs or eye candy or DigiKids or any of that other facile stuff. It's about stripping as much geek OUT of computers so that computers work the way people do. Of course, with OS X it's also now about stripping dumbness out of GUIs which are now seen as generic things – one is as good as another. Swear to God, I suspected there was a problem coming several years ago when "GUI" became a generic word in the computer industry. The original Mac GUI had shocked and stunned a lot of people. Well, GUIs are old hat now and are "safe" as far as the geeks are concerned. They've been integrated into geekdom. Unfortunately that means that some of the fundamental reasons for GUIs, and the principles behind them, have been glossed over or misunderstood. Apple itself has misused their own GUI badly. This new fight is just as fundamental and important as the original fight taken up by Raskin and company. It's time for a new generation of Mac users to kick a little ass.

Wow, brother mAx. I'm surprised the adoption rate is even as high as that 17%. Although if I was asked, is Mac OS X installed on my current working computer, I'd have to answer yes.

But I guarantee you, having installed OS X is not the same as LIKING OS X. Using it full time. Which I certainly, absolutely don't.

My rationale for installing it was this: yeah, yeah, my hands are tied, eventually I'll have to adopt. I'll give it a shot, learn it, and help make it better.

But when it came to USING it? Oh my god. I've never seen such poorly conceived and executed software for the mac. Never in my born days. There's shareware games by teenagers that are more stable and well thought out. This operating system has still not made it through a typical day's work at studio thalo. And oh lord, how I've tried.

I'm guessing other pros are in the same boat. It's our industry, so it ain't like nobody knows about it. I know people have TRIED it. Tested it. Can that account for some of the 17% I don't know. But I do know, that the software is not ready for primetime. I can prove that in a court of law. I could stand up in front of Steve and his marketing team and give a seminar of how and why it's a total failure for what I do. And I don't think I work differently from most design professionals.

From Day 1 I wanted to like and use this software. That's still true. I'm true blue Mac Boy. But I know crap when I see it. Apple needs my help, our help, right now. I could write a plan that would get every pro in the U.S. to adopt in a month. And it's all about the interface, speed, reliability, and stability. Go "Less is More" and all is forgiven.

Here's the test. Everybody who would buy a G5 if the operating system was basically an improved version OS 9 (platinum interface, classic Mac user experience) with protected memory and symmetric multitasking, that simply refused to crash, raise their hands....
[hands]me[/hands]

I was willing to believe they could do it with unix. I assumed code was friggin' code, and the guys who came up with the Mac, were the ones who could bring that user experience to the next level. Oops is right. Double oops. They pooched it. If somebody a couple of years ago asked you this:

"hey, how about a retread of the NeXT interface, on top of a freeware OpenSource BSD core, that will be mostly for geeks who love unix, and newbies/casual users... it will have a bloated, overdone, super-rendered graphically abundant GUI with lots of lighting effects, and animated bells and whistles, kinda like a web site... and whose major intent will appear to be to get you to buy MP3s and web subscriptions and software upgrades? It won't be fast, it won't be intuitive, and won't run your applications very well. The system will be easy to break and flaky, hard to file manage and troubleshoot, and the fonts will be blurry... but that's what Apple expects you to swallow."

You'd laugh, right?

I'd laugh unless it was Jobs himself the one saying it!

Which is what I think happened...