by Asim Jalis
I was reading that Mac has a much more vibrant shareware
community than the PC. As Robert Putnam would put it, the Apple
community has more social capital than the Windows community.
In the Windows world everyone is out for himself. In the Apple
world on the other hand people are more conscientious about
paying shareware costs. Apple attracts the kind of people who
send off their checks to PBS regularly every year. A
disproportionate number of people on the shareware authors list
write only for the Mac.
For example, consider this:
http://www.mennoboy.com/chris/archives/2004/05/mac_versus_wind.html
Excerpt: "I have bought more software for my Mac than I ever did
for my Windows PCs, most of it shareware. Is it really that much
higher quality? Or am I buying her [i.e. the Mac] presents?"
Can this be replicated in the Windows world? I don't know.
It's possible that because the Apple community is a smaller and
more endangered species, it is more altruistic. If Apple becomes
more dominant, it too might suffer from the tragedy of the
commons.
On the other hand, the Mac has always struck me as more of a
religion than a computer. It naturally attracts a certain kind of
people. This both limits its ability to become dominant, and
gives it the aura of transcendental ethereality that Windows
lacks.
