JUST FYI: Marc Andreessen, founder of Netscape, and co-founder of LoudCloud (Opsware) and Ning has finally said good bye to the Windows life, and switched to a Mac. We met for a coffee earlier this morning and while most of the conversation was private, I warned him that the “switch” news was going to be blogged.
Apparently, like many others, his 15-inch Lenovo ThinkPad T60 was barfing on him, though my T60p works just fine. Instead of going for another Windows based machine, he switched to a Macbook Pro (15-inch model). “I used to be a Mac user till 1994,” he said, “and now I am a Mac user again.”
He was visibly happy when telling this little story, though I suspect it was more because he wanted me to stop pestering him “evangelizing” the Mac. I have often wondered how he could keep using Microsoft’s products, given the beat down Netscape got at the hands of Barons of Redmond.
PS: In case you were wondering why this post: Because the next one is about what’s happening in the application-layer of today’s networks. You have been warned!
And he wont understand Windows users anymore. Warning to geeks: you are departing from your customer world.
TanNg:
1. If using Windows is a prerequisite to understanding one’s “customer world”, explain how Microsoft misunderstands it’s customers (and their needs).
FYI, Macs can run Windows now
It’s a web world, Windows is irrelevant
If by “not understand Windows users anymore” you mean “can’t understand why people are still using Windows PCs” you’re probably right. Or do you mean he won’t understand why Windows PC users are having problems with their computers when he isn’t?
Well, if he’s going to do what he does PROPERLY, understanding Windows, Mac, AND LINUX is essential.
innerdaemon – even the web work doesn’t work so well on a Mac. The only saving graces is that you can run both OS’s on a Mac. If you are the corporate software/service world, it would be more of a pain in the ass to run/maintain both OS’s.
I worked on Mac’s for 10 years before switching to Windows 7 years ago. I will give Apple credit in the “cool” factor arena but my life is a lot simplier with one OS and one laptop. Before I had a Windows laptop, Mac desktop and Windows server. Too much.
@innerdaemon. Both now don’t understand customer. Remember even the most successfull Open source software Firefox must have Windows version first.
@TroutMask. He understand nothing about Windows users: their problem with Windows, the value windows bring to them.
I think Geeks or Early Adopter must be living in the world of customers. Now no Geek can understand why I’m still using Microsoft Word but not Google Docs. Many times I have to make a document with 100 or more pages, not every time I want to share it over the internet. Google Docs may be hot and innovative, but MS word still a must have. Geeks could not understand it because they live in different world.
“innerdaemon – even the web work doesn’t work so well on a Mac”
My experience is the opposite. I prefer Firefox on Mac to PC; Safari way outclasses IE. Complex websites– Flickr, my two banks, Etrade, GMail, and Blogger work just fin on my Mac. I expect some sites do not, but any big company that fails to comprehend the value of cleanish web standards will not remain a big company for long (unless its MSFT, sitting like an aging Smaug on vast, undeserved mountains of gold.)
“Marc Andreessen, Switches to a Mac”
…what took him so long……….
How many people, think you add commas at random places in sentences.
Why do so many, add a comma after the first noun in their sentence.
It gets so bloody annoying, to see these incredibly unnatural pauses.
. . .
. . .
(OK, that’s it for my off-topic rant of the day.)
WTF cares. Andreessen is irrelevant since 1998.
“And he wont understand Windows users anymore. Warning to geeks: you are departing from your customer world.”
as innerdaemon rightly pointed out, what difference does the OS make? one only needs to interact with the web and you only need a standards compliant browser. The browser may as well be embedded in your refrigerator!
Using MS is not necessarily the ‘right’ decision. Its more of a habit. if you are only working online, ANY OS with a w3c browser should do. In fact i am making this post from a Nokia E61 + Opera Mini. It DOES not in any way affect my reading the latest blogposts.
AND I have never used a MS PC over the last 13-14 years of my working life in Advertising and Films. And It hasnt adversely affected my life.
Om,
did you ask him if he uses Safari 🙂
Seriously, back in the day Netscape 4.2 was the email and browser choice for the Mac…then IE (was it 5, I suddenly can’t remember) came along.
Hey, it’s a great choice for the web. You can develop on either OS, and test immediately in Parallels — one with a copy of IE6, and another with IE7, to make what you’re doing available to everyone. And that’s the point of the web.
@ TanNg,
Understanding your customers isn’t about whether or not you use Windows or Mac (I use both daily). Great products translate well across platforms and customer’s have universal desires for quality, ease-of-use, intuitive GUIs, and true innovation — on both PC and Mac.
Of course, does it really matter anymore? With dual boot and the increasing prevalence of web-based apps, your platform will become increasing meaningless. Regarding Word, many open source alternatives exist that can read and write in Word format.
FYI MacBook Pro was also the choice of laptop by the team leader for Vista, which he used in all his presentation, and was often asked about during them. He replied that “Apple makes really sexy hardware, and it’s nice to run our OSes on.”
you have to put the crossed-out “evangelizing the mac” first or the joke doesn’t make sense.
dr…
evangelizing is a tad too strong. i nudge people in the direction of the mac. not a joke…
Hi folks…
My wife uses a Mac and always has. I use WinPCs, having migrated there from mainframes of the 70’s. They are both just computers, of course, but the overwhelming distinction of the Mac is the tight integration of hardware/software, the second being quality/style/human factors. These guys understand design.
As to whether anyone switches or not, this is not like switching sexual preference… it’s more like deciding to try something else. Even if it is not ‘better’, it’s sure as hell different. I don’t know about you, but I greeted my liberation from punched cards and teletypes rather enthusiastically. I am about ready to follow both my wife and Andresson into Mac land, just for the thrill of innovation. 99% of what I really do with my home machine I’ll be able to do on a Mac with minor adjustments.
I DO look forward to a new, better set of problems and don’t ever expect my interactions with a computer to be without hiccups. So what? What makes me smart is my ability to confront and resolve them.
I think folks would be well served by getting away from this dichotomy of divisiveness about platforms. There is a ‘faith’ element here that’s resistant to reason, but it should be accepted as a personal preference issue and left at that.
Big whoop.
End users like this, people who are not ‘developers’ (people actually code for the largest market share: Windows) SHOULD use Mac..
And even people who can afford to who ARE developers (using parallels or boot camp) should use Mac.. Its way better hardware!
It seems appropriate for Marc to run Mac OS X, since the Web was invented in NEXTSTEP (which grew into Mac OS X).
It’s a reasonable point that developers should run the same OS that users do, but at the same time, people should run the OS that allows them to be the most productive. Since those are rather obviously different OS’s, the answer (IMO) is to run both, which you can do on Mac’s.
At Pando, our code is extremely portable, so we have developers running any OS that they choose – Windows, Mac, and Linux. My favorite setup is used by the guy writing the core networking code, who runs the Mac and Windows clients on the same computer at the same time (using Parallels) so that he can most easily use debuggers to walk through network interactions (Mac in Xcode, Windows in MS’ tools). It’s pretty funny watching him bang away in two debuggers on the same computer at once.
Where’s the pictures marc?
Fun comments :-). A few thoughts:
I’ve resisted switching in part because of the reason that if you’re not on the majority market share OS, you risk losing touch with regular users.
I think this is offset first by the fact that regular users are mostly using interesting new software through their web browsers, and Firefox runs fine on the Mac…
…and the fact that you can now run Windows and OS X at the same time on the Mac.
Mac people already know this, but sitting here in front of my new Core 2 Duo Macbook Pro, it’s really magical to be running OS X + Parallels + Windows XP all at the same time. Parallels’ Coherence mode puts the XP toolbar right there on my Mac desktop, and puts XP applications right in a window on my Mac desktop.
Of course in reality you get to run all three key OS’s at once: OS X, Windows XP, and Unix (underneath OS X — not exactly the same as Linux, but close!).
And… no more blue screens of death. No more Windows rot (if you don’t install many apps in your Windows VM). Actually, better than that — easily clone a Windows XP VM to install new Windows software, and then blow the whole VM away if you don’t like it.
Nirvana.
Jason McMinn – A lot has changed in 7 years. Mac used to be rather bad under the hood, despite having a very nice interface. But now it’s UNIX, and a badass UNIX at that. And as for the hardware, amazing what you get for the price. Add in the factor of not having to put up with the hassles of Windows on a daily basis, and you’ve got a really smart platform.
In 50 years time people will wonder how Microsoft – the richest company in the world – was so handily trounced by that little upstart from Cupertino.
@ Scott Lahteine: Amen to that! : )
Jason McMinn “Even the web work doesn’t work so well on a Mac.”
I know this post was a while back but I just found it and I want to comment. The above comment is just plain FUD. If anything the web works hunreds of thousands of times better on a Mac than it does on windows. Well not that there are hundreds of thousands of viruses on ‘doze. Also Safari was the first browser to fully pass the Acid 2 test. Opera followed a close second. Next this fool will say that IE is the best browser. Even though it’s the worst. It still fails tons of tests and has loads of buts in version 7. Also my last coment is that Tim Berners Lee invented the WWW on the daddy of Mac OS X (NextStep OS) and his choice of computer now is a Mac. He is still chairman of W3C so take back your stoopid comment Jason because it just made you look like an ignorant Windows troll fanboy. Post truths and things you can prove not pathetic opinions brought to you by the real reality distortion field FUD engine from Redmond.
Just to correct my typos – sorry!
Jason McMinn “Even the web work doesn’t work so well on a Mac.”
I know this post was a while back but I just found it and I want to comment. The above comment is just plain FUD. If anything the web works hundreds of thousands of times better on a Mac than it does on windows. Well, now that there are hundreds of thousands of viruses on ‘doze. Also Safari was the first browser to fully pass the Acid 2 test. Opera followed a close second. Next this fool will say that IE is the best browser. Even though it’s the worst. It still fails tons of tests and has loads of bugs in version 7. Also my last coment is that Tim Berners Lee invented the WWW on the daddy of Mac OS X (NextStep OS) and his choice of computer now is a Mac. He is still chairman of W3C so take back your stoopid comment Jason because it just made you look like an ignorant Windows troll fanboy. Post truths and things you can prove not pathetic opinions brought to you by the real reality distortion field FUD engine from Redmond.