Apple proprietary software in Windows: the rhyme and reason?

Does anyone know how Apple decides which software to offer in Windows and which not to?

Safari: offered in Windows for free

iTunes: offered in Windows, massive profit potential (through in-program purchases)

Quicktime: offered in Windows for free

Pages suite: not offered in Windows, profit potential ($60 for the suite, half the price of Office Home Premium)

iPhoto: not offered in Windows (I personally would pay up to $60 to have this program in Windows, as it's a great program for managing family photos, but it's not available for any price)

GarageBand: not offered in Windows (I wouldn't pay for it, but some might)

etc. I don't see any rhyme or reason to which are offered for Windows, and which are OSX-only.

 

I don't understand Apple packaging iTunes with Quicktime bloatware. It's not like there's any money in that, just a lot of hate towards quicktime.

 

They need to have SOME reason for people to buy an Apple

If all the apps are on Windows there is no reason, because it surely isn't the hardware

 

But why offer Safari in Windows then? That's the weirdest to me, because there is ZERO profit potential for them, and a decent amount of work to make a web browser run well in a different OS.

And I will say again that I would pay money to have iPhoto in Windows. I'm not going to pay a $500-$1000 premium on the laptop itself just to get iPhoto, so it's not like they're gaining money from me by not offering it in Windows, but I would rather pay Apple $60 for iPhoto than pay Adobe equivalent money for Photoshop Elements.

 

There seems to be at least one correlation to what you mentioned above. FREE means NO SUPPORT required. Apple probably do not care much about staffing up Windows software technician. If they ported over GarageBand to Windows and sold it at a price, then they would have to support people who needed help installing it/using it on Windows. Safari on Windows sucks, to be honest, just as a bad as the IE9 browser... so I'm glad they don't charge for Safari because they would get a lot of phone calls for that POS Windows app. I am not an iTunes fan either, so I use 3rd party app to inject songs/movies... but have to keep iTunes in order to upgrade my iphone/ipad. I like QuickTime and GarageBand (on my IPAD2) though and glad Quicktime is free.

 

iTunes and Quicktime are interwoven programs. The reason iTunes/Quicktime is available on windows is the iPod. This was years ago. Apple is in the computer business, but really the iPod is what put them on the map. They wanted everyone to be able to buy an iPod, not just Mac users. Today, the iPhone and iPad still need to be tied to a computer through iTunes, and Apple doesn't want only Mac users to be able to buy iPhones and iPads (and the iPod touch, too). Those are far and away their primary business.

Safari is really the only anomaly. It wasn't available on windows until recently. I think safari for windows is primarily for web developers to be able to verify proper functionality in safari without owning a mac. Safari is the default web browser for iOS and for the mac, and it helps those systems if web developers can make sure their sites are working correctly. The web is cross platform. They want websites to work whether the developers are in the apple ecosystem or not. "Apple web" just wouldn't be good enough. Note that Xcode is not available on windows, but that also makes sense, because iOS and Mac native apps aren't meant to be crossplatform (they can be, but apple could care less)

Pages, iPhoto, Garageband are all part of the software package related directly to the sales of mac computers, so they are OS X and mac only.

In other words, the primary ecosystem for Apple is iOS, and it used to be the iPod. Mac computers are also a big part of their business, but iOS comes first. Technologies that are required for consumers get into iOS are not going to be Mac exclusive. Web development is the one "bone" Apple is throwing to windows, because it's so pervasive and such a fundamental requirement of proper stability in iOS. Software related to the mac ecosystem is mac exclusive.

 

I have better experience with Safari than IE9, as it would open sites where IE 9 clearly struggles even if after refreshing 4 or 5 times. Of course, no one beats FF or chrome (opera is good too) as Safari is not my main browser even on my MBP.

 

They can easily make iTunes a standalone with the codecs. But they choose not to.

I mean, does ANYONE really WANT Quicktime at all?

 

they built them as separate technologies in osx and ported them both to windows in the simplest way possible. I'm sure it's easier for them to maintain the windows port of quicktime and iTunes than it would be for them to develop a different application and call it iTunes.

 

I had to use quicktime to play some videos on my old crappy laptop because with vista + cheap PC + iTunes = too much lag on anything bought from itunes unless I killed absolutely everything extraneous including itunes itself.

 

In my opinion it goes like this ...

Apple realized plenty people liked the iPod but were not about to make the move to OS X just to be able to use it ... Hence iTunes/QuickTime was moved to Windows.

As for Safari ... Well Apple realized "Hey, I think we make a better browser than MS, let's see if people using Windows agree" ... It's pretty much free advertising for OS X so why not.

Apple wouldn't make their paid software (Aperture, Garageband etc) available for purchase on Windows because then people wouldn't have any reason to move to OS X.

Microsoft is a software company, so it makes sense for them to sell their software on as many platforms as possible.

Apple is a software company too, but they make more money from their hardware. Consequently, it makes no sense to get a revenue from Windows platform when they could persuade customers to pay for Mac computers to get access to these programs.

It's all about money really.

 

I think the reason Safari was ported was explained before. Its for web developers and for people who have macs who like Safari and don't want to use IE to use it while they are on Windows.

Apple doesn't want to force web developers to buy a mac to have safari compatabile sites (as then a lot of sites wouldn't be compatible) so they have Safari.

Quicktime is there because of iTunes, and everything else makes sense. Apple wants iPhoto to be part of the mac experience, the same for pages etc. Plus the only advantage pages has is that its cheaper and if you shop for office right you can get it for $60.

 

Safari usually works if you dont use the compatibility hacks that are needed for sites to work on IE6 or IE7, IE8 and IE9, or older versions of firefox.

Most modern browsers accept directly HTML 4.1 and HTML 5, and are used to javascript, CSS and XHTML

 

There is some rhyme to what Apple is doing. First off, iTunes is a front end to QuickTime. That is the way Apple originally set it up (for whatever reason) so, unless they re-program iTunes as its own entity, they have to carry that over into Windows which means that both iTunes and QuickTime need to be installed under Windows if iTunes is to work properly. Granted, Apple probably could make iTunes its own thing in Windows but why have people just download one program when they can have two and further increase the install base? Additionally, we all know that the iPod, iPhone, and iPad would have been only somewhat successful if Apple limited iTunes and QuickTime to just OS X. The iPod didn't explode until Apple opened it up to Windows.

As for Safari, that is nothing more than software promotion. Get Safari out there, let people experience it in Windows, and then show that it is a better experience under OS X. They are also competing with Mozilla, Google, MS, etc. who are also putting out completely free browsers that have no monitory value. As previously mentioned, it is all about the browser wars and install base where increasing the amount of computers (regardless of OS) their software is running under is a good thing. Apple also has other software for Windows such as Bonjour for setting up a few other services (wi-fi printing using Apple's AirPort Express and Extreme hardware). They also have the Apple software update client which is similar to what is out for OS X yet it just focuses on Apple software updates whereas the OS X version ties itself in with OS X updates and those for other Apple programs (iWork, iLife).

More specific programs such as iLife (GarageBand, iPhoto) are tied specifically to OS X though. They always have been and will likely continue to be like that. After all, if Apple released all their software for Windows, the reasons for buying a Mac would decrease. I really enjoy messing around in GarageBand especially showing off its auto tune-like feature (it helps cover up the fact that I have zero musical talent) and it definitely was a side benefit of switching to OS X. So was iPhoto. I didn't really see a need for such a program but I really like it a lot and, contrary to my disbelief in using dedicated e-mail programs, I use Mail with my Gmail account all the time and iCal syncs up with my Google calendar so that I can make an entry on my Droid X and it will automatically sync over.

So it makes sense that most of Apple's pay software is available for their OS platform. The only one (that I can think of) that isn't is QuickTime Pro.

 

even simpler way of thinking about this:

if:

dollars earned because of port availability - cost of porting - lost mac sales due to program availability on alternate platform > 0

then they port. otherwise, no. they are factoring in long term projections here.

since iOS is a huge percentage of their income, and iTunes is the portal to all things iOS, iTunes gets the port. Quicktime gets the port because Quicktime is an iTunes component. Some lost mac sales, many earned iOS sales.

Since safari web compatibility is critical to maintain mac sales and iOS device sales, safari gets the port. Long term increase in both mac sales and iOS sales. People aren't picking windows of os x because safari is available on windows. However, safari working properly does gain Apple customers on all their platforms which use safari (iOS and Mac OS X)

 

why not use some vlc?
My problem with quick time is that it couldnt play 90% of stuff that i had even after i downloaded all codecs that i could possibly find. Then i downloaded 10mb vlc and it worked ever since without any updates.

 

Yes QT is not up to the mark even to realplayer.

 

Quicktime was available on Windows for the longest. Way before iTunes, and at that time it was pretty good at streaming, especially dealing with dial up speeds. I remember using it on 95 and ME. I also used to love the fact that it was capable of playing multiple windows of music/videos at once, screenshots, and a couple of other things that no other player could do back then.

Now I have absolutely no need for it on Windows or OSX.