Transitive’s Rosetta: Get Your Software Buffet Style?

When people buy their first computer they are making a longer-term investment than they likely realize. Initially they may have planned to keep the machine for a few years and then make a computer purchasing decision anew but when the time arrived to get a new box-o-silicon they, in all probability, bought what amounts to the same machine. Sure it went faster and had some nifty new drives but, essentially, it was just a newer model of the same hunk of circuitry. The outcome isn’t surprising when one stops and thinks about all the money (or pirating time) people sink into software over the life of the computer. If you’ve got six grand invested in software for your machine you’re not likely to jettison all that software and start your collection again simply because you’d like to try out a different platform. Well, that is only partially true, Apple being the beneficent company they are, incentivized many folks to try out the competition over the years.

Microsoft and the PC makers have largely avoided Apple’s path. In part because they understand the importance of backwards compatibility and in part because there is no real pressure for them to substantially change their core platform. To illustrate: Given a choice between outright alienating, say, 25% of your user base or giving 90% of your user base something slightly worse than what you could produce if you were unfettered by the past most companies go with option B. There’s nothing wrong with that, radically changing a platform is a difficult transition and if your goal is to keep milking the cash cow then you really have no alternative other than to incrementally improve your system. That modus operandi, some people think, is about to change.

If you read the interview linked above you’ll note that Transitive’s CEO Bob Wiederhold is making some very bold predictions in a decidedly low key manner. What Mr. Wiederhold is telling the rest of the world, and probably something that he fervently believes, is that the days of kowtowing to legacy software and hardware are on the way out. In his scenario Microsoft suddenly has no reason not to innovate with a radically different operating system, Intel has no reason to hold on to the x86 architecture if there is something better on the drawing board and Apple has no reason to stick with the PPC. Those changes would be the most obvious for the computer sphere but the deeper change Mr. Wierderhold is predicting is that the days of platform dependence are coming to a close. In Transitive’s version of the future just about any machine will be able to run just about any application with about a twenty percent speed hit. Imagine you’re a film guy and you want to use Final Cut Pro. Grab a generic PC, a copy of FCP and OS X, and you’re ready to go. If you’re a Mac oriented person and you have the sincere desire to run Microsoft Access in the world sketched by Wiederhold it is a trivial problem.

It is now necessary to touch on a tangential issue. Reading the above some people will surely argue that 80% of top speed simply isn’t acceptable. Why would a user settle for less performance than their computer is actually capable of? A seemingly legitimate question but one that neglects the likely increase in computing power that the next five years will bring. To put this notion in proper perspective consider that a top of the line Mac runs a cool three grand. The Mini (a perfectly capable machine that people tend to eschew more for personal perceived inadequacies than any deficiency inherent in the machine) costs $499. So you could by a Mini every year for the next five years for the price of one 2.7 GHz PowerMac. Six years from now which computer do you think will be more powerful? The point, of course, is that computing power is rapidly surpassing the needs of the average user so 80% of “way freakin overpowered” will be plenty.

Now we can return the question of just what a platform independent future means for the rest of us. It means, should it come to pass, a nearly level playing field for all software. Imagine the benefits as a consumer if you could use Windows and run the sublimely programmed iLife Suite. Or if you could fire up your Mac and run some truly awesome piece of PC software (AutoCAD makes some nice stuff). The picture Bob Wiederhold is painting is a computing nirvana, a world in which you, the consumer, could pick and choose the very best from any particular vendor you desire.

As enthusiastic as Mr. Wiederhold seems to be it is difficult to get too excited by the sunny tomorrows populating the world of Transitive. Naturally the claims of 80% should be regarded with a bit skepticism, after all CEOs are in the business of casting the most favorable light possible on their products but that isn’t the only reason to doubt a multiple platform revolution is just around the corner. It may not come as a surprise that Apple wants you to replace your Mac with another Mac. Dell sincerely desires the people who use Dells to buy another Dell when they dust the spot under the computer. Microsoft doesn’t want to just sell you a copy of Office, they want to sell you Office and the latest Windows OS. In short the computer industry sincerely desires you to keep on doing what you’re doing. To those folks it isn’t overly restrictive, it is simply a business model. Hence to imagine that Apple or Microsoft will gladly let you move to a different platform, picking and choosing only the best bits they have to offer seems a bit naive. If the computing landscape envisioned by Bob Wiederman is ever to happen you can bet the computer companies will have be dragged there kicking and screaming.