It Only Takes One

Business Week on the increasing number of companies that have at least some Macs:

In a survey of 250 diverse companies that has yet to be released, the market research firm Yankee Group found that 87% now have at least some Apple computers in their offices, up from 48% two years ago.

What’s interesting about this is that it’s one of the few surveys I’ve seen that doesn’t focus on raw market share. While hardware manufacturers might be interested to know that Apple has X% of the total market, software developers shouldn’t care.

What software developers should care about is the number of companies (read: potential clients) who have some Macs (or Linux, or Solaris etc). It only takes one key user to have a Mac and your Windows-only solution is dead in the water. It really doesn’t matter if 99% of the staff use Windows, if the key decision maker happens to use a Mac you’d better have a cross platform solution.

This “it only takes one” approach is one of the key reasons that EditLive! has done so well – it emerged right at the very start of the Mac resurgence (our initial Mac testing was on the old-skool colourful iMac) and it was almost the only cross platform in-browser editor at the time. There may not be very many Mac users in number, but they are spread to enough key places that being Windows-only is a major barrier to entry.