More FUD In Your Eye

2008.01.17   prev     next

In FUZ and then later FUV, I declared that since Apple is now determined to be as compatible with the Windows PC world as possible (without just making Windows PCs, of course!), Microsoft must try to create compatibility issues for the Mac, in order to maintain the “FUD” effect — the tendency of people to be afraid to buy a Mac because of the possibility of compatibility issues they may run into.

But, I said, Microsoft must be careful to make any compatibility issues they create seem unintentional, lest the anti-trust division of the government comes after them again.

So what’s happened lately with regard to this claim?

Apple — The new MacBook Air ultra-portable notebook computer doesn’t have an optical (CD/DVD) drive. It’s intended to be a wireless device — after all it doesn’t even have an Ethernet jack — so Apple figured, why ruin a great device by throwing in an optical drive you’ll almost never need?

But — what if you do need it sometime? To install software from CD/DVD, for example? Apple’s solution is a feature called Remote Disc, that let’s you use any CD/DVD drive on a nearby computer! Very nice. But what if the optical drive is on a Windows PC? No problem. Remote Disc also works with Windows, and will allow a MacBook Air to use the CD/DVD drive of a Windows PC — even to install Mac software from an installation disc made specifically for the Mac.

So that’s what Apple’s been doing. More compatibility with the Windows world. Less reason to fear that buying a Mac will be some sort of handicap when surrounded by Windows PCs in some cubicle farm or wherever.

Microsoft — Office 2008 for Mac just came out, and guess what? It no longer supports VBA. Why not? Because continuing to support VBA on the Mac was just too complicated (i.e. porting nightmarishly complicated and MS-technology-dependent code was too expensive). And since Apple users can just use AppleScript and Automator, what would they need VBA for?

Answer: They would need it, as purchasers of MS Office, to successfully use MS Office files from any other computer, that’s what! Now they can’t. The FUD is back, and in the worst way.

So it goes. Apple continues to create new, marvelous products, with a hyperconscious effort to ensure that its customers don’t suffer for living near lots of Windows PCs. (Or even for using Windows PCs, as with iPod, iTunes, and AppleTV.) Microsoft continues to find ways to ensure that anyone who buys a Mac will have some sort of irresolvable problem, and wind up with a nagging feeling that “I should have just bought a Windows computer like everyone else. It might not be as nice as this Mac I bought, but I’d never be standing out in the cold with a glitch that nobody else in my office or circle of friends is having to deal with.”

Microsoft’s winning hand over the past two decades, and continuing today, is not to create anything better than — or even as good as — what Apple makes. It’s just to find some way to casually sabotage people who didn’t buy a Windows PC, and let the FUD do its work of keeping Microsoft on top.

Update 2008.01.29 — Check out Ian Hickson’s Mistakes Sadness and Regret (courtesy Daring Fireball).

Update 2008.02.04 — Linux creator Linus Torvalds on patent FUD.

Update 2008.05.13 — Whoa! VBA is back! I guess I have to eat some crow. Munch, munch. Tastes like chicken.