OS [Ubuntu/Vista] Cross Compatibility – Critical Success Factor for Application Success in the Market

Anyone who has been reading my blog knows am a Ubuntu fan … and on all my computers, I dual-boot between Windows XP and Ubuntu desktop. It just occurred to me this morning [18th May 2008] why of two applications capable of achieving the same task, I choose one over the other even though both are installed on my machine.

Since I use both OSes approximately equally, what determines what application I use is whether I can continue my work irrespective of Operating system. It is for this reason that open file formats and cross compatible applications [even if file formats are closed] are an extremely important determinant of application success in the marketplace.

Even though I think Mindjet Mindmanager is way cooler than the Freemind, I almost always use Freemind for my mindmaps because it is installed both in my Windows & Ubuntu OSes and I can start my work in Windows and continue in Ubuntu [Linux] or vice versa. That is not as easy to do with Mindmanager unless u are a WINE guru — I for one frown on running XP in a virtual machine on my Linux just to run one application … thank you sir …. I’ll use Freemind.

Other applications in this category … ie those becoming more and more OS-agnostic [ie apart from web applications that is] which I frequently use are

1. Inkscape over CorelDraw [I think OpenOffice.org Draw sucks!!!]

2. Juice [Linux version is called Icepodder] as podcast aggregator vs Itunes.

3. OpenOffice.org Writer and Calc for wordprocessing and spreadsheets.

It may then be that one strategy for an application to take to gain market share is to keep your file format proprietary and closed but make the application OS-agnostic … and there better be a free [yes as in free beer] version or else …..

~ by mukom777 on May 21, 2008.