It is obvious that gruber is an avid mac user from his posts and generally dislikes windows as many mac users due but this:
But Windows is proof that popularity doesn’t guarantee market-leading quality.
Makes me wonder what market he is speaking of, if it is something along the lines of graphic design (both OS and for uses) sure the mac ranks pretty high up but what about corporate environments, average home users, aging adults, engineering software (civil,electrical,mechanical) these are all things that windows ranks pretty high for market quality.
Windows may be a pain in the ass for some power users or home end users but I bet if the market shares were reversed mac would be heckled as much as windows by average users and certain power users.
His emphasis in that sentence is on quality, not on market-leading. The quality of application design on Windows is dreadful. The best applications are the ones that create an entirely separate interface and run in full screen, and even then you don't have very many that are attractive or appealing. I think the only real stand-out I've seen is Google Chrome, which was better-designed when it came out on Windows than any browser on the Mac, and which still holds a slight edge over Safari 4 in terms of pure elegance. Everything else ranges from mediocre to terrible. Office 2008: Mediocre. And I liked Office 2008 because I had a Mac.
For whatever reason, Apple's hardware attracts brilliant software design. I can name ten Mac-only apps off the top of my head that blow away their Windows/Linux rivals for design superiority. I could name several dozen for the iPhone that are of a similar make. I couldn't name one for any other platform. The difference is staggering.
Windows may be a pain in the ass for some power users or home end users but I bet if the market shares were reversed mac would be heckled as much as windows by average users and certain power users.
I'd take that challenge. Last year I went to a college with computer diversity. This year I'm at a Mac-only college. Last year everybody bitched about their computers; this year, there's literally no comment about computer usage, because everything just works within the sphere of my acquaintances.
Windows is simply the only OS widely available to run on the vast majority of the machines that people own (PCs) and that's compatible with most software than people want to run.
Windows basically has no competitors in the PC OS field. Linux is a fine OS, which I run myself, but it's not widely available in shops/preinstalled and doesn't run the majority of apps that people want MYOB, Quickbooks, iTunes, Microsoft Office etc.
Windows may be a pain in the ass for some power users or home end users but I bet if the market shares were reversed mac would be heckled as much as windows by average users and certain power users.