Why Apps Need to Be Non-Platform Specific

Anyone who waded into the comment section of my DimDim review noted a mini-debate began about my feelings about the service. Mainly, why I felt that its current lack of support for Mac and Linux users was a deal-breaker.

Web 2.0 has been all about people and web apps. Conversation and creating accessible apps for sharing and conversing and socializing. so why is it important that everything be non-platform specific?

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster claims that, if you back out purchases of PCs made by businesses, Apple's market share of the PC market is closer to 21%. That's a potential 1/5 of your audience who may not be able to use your app, especially if you add in the Linux market. And yes, virtualization software can often allow users to use an app not designed to work with their operating system, but do you really want to require that additional expenditure, or should you build out functionality from the start?

Another example of how wrong this can go launched its public beta yesteray. Syncplicity is designed to allow you to sync online apps with your desktop, syncing data across multiple computers and/or users, backing up files, and essentially doing what Google Gears and Adobe Air apps are already building out without reliance on a specific platform.

What Syncplicity doesn't make obvious on their pretty splash page is that it requires you install Microsoft's .NET Framework 3.0 to use it. If you take the tour, it does say in the sidebar that Mac support is planned for Q3 2008, but with new companies and applications launching every day, you lose the initial momentum of your launch.

Obviously, I'm a Mac user, so these issues impact me directly. But I know that when you assume when building your product that the majority of users are, were, and always will be, Windows users, you are losing an audience, tying yourself to a platform that is losing ground, and setting yourself up to constantly be chasing other companies who thought ahead and didn't limit themselves. I have a list nearly as long as my arm of apps I want to try and review that I'm waiting for a Mac version for. Some are compelling enough to keep me checking back, but I often forget about them. By the time third quarter rolls around and they release a version I could try, I'll likely have forgotten Syncplicity. That shouldn't be any company's plan.