OS Tying

The soap opera on the Macintosh platform continues apace as more details on the next version of MacOS X come out. In our last episode, we saw lots of debates over whether Apple's upcoming Dashboard is ripping off Konfabulator (a popular MacOS X program that has similar widget features as DesktopX has). There's a lot of debate on this and I think the final question is this: If Konfabulator didn't exist, would MacOS X have Dashboard.  We can debate that all day but I think the answer is no.  Everything else becomes secondary to that question. You either believe Apple would have added this feature that is amazingly similar in terms of what it does to Konfabulator or you believe they wouldn't have.

But there is a deeper issue here. An issue that is of interest to all users of OS enhancement software (especially Windows ones). That is the problem/benefit of taking software conceived and developed by independent developers and tying it into the OS. Microsoft is notorious for this kind of thing. That's why Object Desktop is conceived as a subscription as opposed to a box you buy at your local store.

OS tying has been elegantly explained here.

OS Tying

You tie an app or functionality to the OS by not making it available separately for a price. For example, when you one day arbitrarily decide that a full-featured calendaring app is now part of the OS, that app is tied to the OS. Users who simply want the performance improvements and greater hardware compatibility historically provided by OS upgrades, no longer have that choice.

I have talked about the potential damage OS tying does. The principle damage it does is take the wind out of innovation in a particular market as you are then at the mercy of the OS vendor. People who remember Windows 98 may remember the "channels" that came with it based on Active Desktop.  But that feature was inspired from a program called Pointcast. Pointcast was a real innovator who helped create a big trend during the late 90s called "Push" technology. It was really cool stuff.  But Microsoft co-opted it and put in Active Desktop.  It wasn't well implemented but it took the wind out of Pointcast's sails. Today, Pointcast.com takes you to one of those domain sales pages. They're gone.

Was Microsoft "evil" to do this? No.  Microsoft saw something that it believed people wanted and tried to deliver it to everyone. I'm not privy to what happened at Microsoft at the time or why the channels and Active Desktop got put aside but once Microsoft's channels went away, the whole field just disappeared. Would Push technology have matured into something truly great? We'll never know.

Point Cast vs Active Desktop Channels

Microsoft has become so notorious at OS tying over the years (instant messaging, ZIP, a skinnable Windows Media Player, UXTheme, Internet Explorer, MS Movie Maker, etc.) that when we started moving from OS/2 we were told going to Windows was insane. That as soon as we came up with something good, Microsoft would just rip us off.  Their suggestion: Develop for Linux or MacOS. 

Microsoft gets an unfair rap though. Apple has done the same thing for a long time.  Sherlock eventually sucked up all the innovations in Watson to the point that Watson died. And those who don't excuse Apple for everything can point out countless smaller examples.

Suffice to say, all the OS vendors do it.  As a sweeping generalization I'll say it's a bad trend with a handful of exceptions.  The exceptions are when the OS vendor decides to keep improving it (Instant Messenger and Windows Media Player come to mind).  It's bad when the OS vendor implements it half-assed and kills the market (Channels, Active Desktop, WinForms, arguably Internet Explorer -- read this, disk compression, News Reader in Outlook Express). 

Internet Explorer circa 1999 (5 years ago)

When an OS vendor gets into the act and bundles something into the OS, they effectively kill a market. Non-developers will retort "Well, if you make something that's better then what's included then people will buy it." Nonsense. Most shareware authors make their living largely from low hanging fruit. Most developers lack the marketing ability to clearly explain the benefit of their non-free program versus the "free" version in the OS.   There are exceptions of course (WindowBlinds sales took off when Windows XP came out and continue to grow). But in general it kills them.  That's because most third party programs sell very very few copies. I.e. sales are measured in the two digit field per week. Take away the low hanging fruit and that developer is pushed over the edge and the app disappears.

But the pressure on OS vendors to tie into the OS is great.  Tying popular program concepts into the OS is a lot cheaper than coming up with new stuff. Apple advocates point to how "innovative" MacOS Tiger is.  Balderdash.  While Expose is definitely quite innovative, I haven't seen too much true innovation in MacOS since the original release of MacOS X 4 years ago.  By contrast, Microsoft really is trying to do some neat things with Longhorn.  Some of these things, like Avalon, have a rough equivalent in MacOS X (Quartz).  But you have to give Microsoft credit for at least focusing on core features rather than simply lifting ideas from popular shareware programs and throwing them in there.  Admittedly, however, other than peer file sharing, Microsoft is running out of popular third party programs to lend into the OS (top downloads at Download.com last week).

So what's your view on OS tying?

Also, here is an article that disagree with my views that I thought was pretty interesting:
http://daringfireball.net/2004/07/konfab_confab