--- Forwarded Message from Jeff Magoto <[log in to unmask]> ---

>In-Reply-To: <[log in to unmask]>
>References: <[log in to unmask]>
>From: Jeff Magoto <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Re: LLTI Digest - 11 Mar 2005 to 14 Mar 2005 (#2005-38)
>Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2005 08:07:08 -0800
>To: Language Learning and Technology International Information Forum
<[log in to unmask]>

Chris and others have made some good points about market share and platform
preponderance. For many of us the bottom line is simply what will their IT
people support. We're lucky to be on a very platform-agnostic campus, so we've
been able to remain an all Mac OSX Language Center. We've found that the long
term costs of machine ownership and the reduced need for technical support to be
good reasons for doing so.

But nothing really matters as much as what faculty and students want to do in
the labs. Here, that's increasingly been project-driven, presentation-driven,
and fluency- driven work. So the Mac's combination of basic multimedia tools
like the iLife suite and our own resolve that any web-based applications be
fully cross-platform, multilingual, and, ideally, speech-enabled, has served
them well (or so they say).

Jeff Magoto
University of Oregon

On Mar 14, 2005, at 9:00 PM, Automatic digest processor wrote:

--- Excerpt:

From: LLTI-Editor <[log in to unmask]>
Date: March 14, 2005 10:08:00 AM PST
Subject: Re: #7836.3 software availability for OSX (!)


--- Forwarded Message from "Chris Dalessandri" <[log in to unmask]> ---

--- Excerpt:
From: "Chris Dalessandri" <[log in to unmask]>
To: "Language Learning and Technology International Information Forum"
--- end of excerpt
<[log in to unmask]>
--- Excerpt:
Subject: RE: #7836 software availability for OSX
Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 10:36:51 -0500
Importance: Normal
In-Reply-To: <[log in to unmask]>
--- end of excerpt


I can not speak to the issue of what CALL software is available for Macs,
but I am a software developer who has been around the industry for a while.
I do not want debate the issue of which platform is better, they both have
there plusses and minuses. One important thing to note is there are several
Windows emulators for
Macs out there, but there are no Mac emulators for windows. This is because
Macs are only about 3% of the market, and that number is falling.  Even in
the education market, Microsoft continues take market share away from Apple.

As a software developer, I would like to support OSX but as a business
person I can not devote an excessive amount of time to a platform that has a
small and shrinking market share. Where it makes sense we write
applications to run on both OSX and windows, but this is exclusively for web
based applications, not for applications that need to be installed. This is
an unfortunate, but real problem.  If you look around the industry, only the
largest companies are able to develop for both platforms.  Most software
companies have to
pick one or the other; and most of us choose the one with the largest number
of possible customers (Windows).



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