The Trojan iLife

How many times have you heard the call for iLife to be ported to Windows? In an article Apple analyst James R Stoup wrote on Apple Matters, Should Apple port the iLife suite, he noted me as a supporter of the idea. Just to refresh:

Mr. Howard felt the opposite, that another “halo effect” could be accomplished if people just knew the quality of Apple’s product lines. He based this opinion on the assumption that iLife would face no serious, coordinated competition and that only consumer applications be considered for release.

Those of use who do support iLife on Windows, claim “It would be a Trojan Horse!”. And so it would - of sorts. More like one that’s too big to get through the gates of Troy. So the citizens would have to come to it. Sure the soldiers could still blitz the unsuspecting Trojans, but without getting in the gate, their efforts would mostly be in vain. Likewise iLife on Windows. Most would escape Apple’s effort to entice them to switch.

So, in terms of the Mac, an even more effective Trojan Horse would be one that gets users buying Macs outright, buying a Mac now, not “maybe in the future”. Maybe NOT porting iLife is the answer. I recently I read an article by George Ou on ZDNet, that presented to me the reason why Apple might not have ported iLife. The article is about virtualization but virtualization that is supported by the CPU (unlike say Virtual PC which is solely driven by the software) and says in part:

When I speak of virtualization, I don’t mean the kind of virtualization that makes Rosetta so slow because it has to do costly PowerPC to Intel x86 CPU emulation. I’m speaking of the type of virtualization that’s never been available to Apple before, but is now because of the new Intel CPUs. The new form of emulation is a thin translation layer that minimizes resource overhead… and [can] install multiple operating systems such as Mac OS X for Intel, Windows, Linux, or BSD directly on to the raw hardware

What if you could get “most” to convert? With virtulization you could have Windows, OS X and Linux all running simultaneously, opening up the opportunity to run the best of breed applications, irrespective of platform. And of course, the only machines that could run all the main OSes are Macs.

Does Apple want you to run Windows on Macs?
Apple’s behavior lately would suggest it’s not too keen for you to run Windows on Intel Macs. The mere fact that Apple has gone for an Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI), rather than a BIOS suggests that Apple wants to discourage it for as long as possible. You might argue that Apple did this to be at the forefront of technology, and to not have to upgrade OS X in the future, rendering earlier versions incompatible. Sound arguments indeed, but the prospect of not having Windows XP or earlier versions on Intel Macs was undoubtedly a sweetener.

Longer term though, Apple does not want operating systems on Macs that lead to user comments such as “Stupid computer!” or “Typical Mac!” Do you reckon you might get them if someone was running Windows XP (or earlier) on a Mac? Afterall, people swear at their computer, not at their OS. You hear people all the time say, “I’m no good with computers.” If you’re smart (that excludes me) you should say, “Oh really? Have you ever considered that maybe it’s the OS and the software?” When I had my computer support business I used to respond “It’s not you, it’s the computer.” Wrong again. I should have been saying “It’s the OS. It’s the software.” (In defence of myself, there were sometimes I did point out the poorly designed software.)

I’ve been using Microsoft operating systems for 20 years and I can say they are improving. Vista will be a better operating system than XP. XP was better than 2000. 2000 was better than NT. You can start nit-picking Windows, but you can do the same on OS X. The biggest shock I got when switching to Macs a few years ago was that they weren’t perfect. Funny how I didn’t hear that from Mac users when I was on the other side of the fence…

Vista will have it’s raft of issues. But if you’re Apple, would you prefer that raft or XP’s raft? If you must run Windows on a Mac, I think Apple would prefer it be the one that would least tarnish the Mac’s reputation. And that will be Vista.

Multiple OSes
As one who has run dual boot PCs (Linux and Windows), and am even now running dual OS X installations on my Mac, it is annoying having to reboot to get to the other OS. (If you’re wondering why I run dual OS X, the second one is for testing and reviewing software - plus it’s also useful for testing backups by restoring them. It means I can have a totally sterile environment to test in and I don’t pollute my operational installation with software and/or fragments of software. Which reminds me - Mac OS X needs a decent software uninstaller.)

Virtualization means no reboot. Macs with anything but the latest specifications will probably put the other OSes to sleep in the background, but that won’t be much of an inconvenience unless you want to leave some process running.

So now you’ve got a nice shiny Mac running Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard), Fedora (Linux) and Windows Vista. Each running in it’s own space and simultaneously. What more could you want?

Despite this ideal scenario, you will begin to gravitate to one system more than the other two. It will be partly affected by how and where you use your Mac. The ideal isn’t really multiple OSes - that’s the ideal work around.  But as you find more and more software is available on OS X that fulfills your needs, you will use OS X more and more, until one day you’ll realise it’s been weeks since you fired up Windows. And it all starts with iLife.

Get back on the horse
Where did we leave that Trojan Horse? Ah! There it is, iLife. I don’t care who you are, there is some element of iLife that you will find useful. If not now, then in the future. The digital life is upon us, and has been for sometime. Whether it’s music, photos or movies we are all getting more and more into the digital recording, storage and management of them. It’s a cliche, but it is the way of the future.

It’s oft acknowledged even in Windows circles that iLife provides the best digital lifestyle management tools. This is an ace in Apple’s hand, one not to be given away easily. But, does Apple merely want to be a software vendor for Windows PCs? That has, is and always will be a real possibility unless Apple can find a way to get more people using Macs.

Contrary to what I might have thought when James wrote that article, I can now see why Apple would want to keep a hold on iLife - it more than any other software provides Apple’s security ticket. As long as Apple has iLife they will keep selling Macs. I had seen it as a Trojan Horse if Apple could get it onto Windows because then Windows users’ data would be Mac compatible and thus enable easier switching. But that was before I was aware of virtualization and the implications of it. Because the truth is, as long as Apple keeps iLife “OS X only”, it will be able to take advantage of the new Intel CPUs and maximize its opportunity to bring new users into the fold.

The Linux crowd will probably be the first to demonstrate this new virtualization working in the wild, but if Apple can be close behind, it can start stuffing that Trojan Horse full of iLife, and maybe this time, it can be just the right size to get in the gate (or Gates).