I have a question for the community at large.
Over the past year that I’ve been reading Lifehacker
and other productivity sites (like 43 Folders), I’ve noticed a number productivity
apps for the Mac OSX that are just friggin awesome. They really seem to be well
thought-out and really "fit into the workflow."
For example:
My question is, why don’t such things exist for Windows?...
or do they, and we just don’t know about it?
Surely, there exist the same needs for really good
productivity apps among Windows users. Heck, if David
Allen gave a 45-minute lecture to Google (and I’m sure a lot of them
are PC users), then the need is out there. And yet, as much as Outlook and
OneNote are useful applications, they just don’t "fit into the workflow" as
well as the aforementioned Mac OSX applications. And they definitely aren’t as
polished (with regard to either eye-candiness or usability).
Recently, Long Zheng described a new business app that uses WPF, and it looks pretty sleek.
So, the capability is there... But such things are still few and far between. Indeed (as far as I know), even Microsoft itself hasn't released any great apps that exploit WPF or the other capabilities of Vista.
So what gives? Is there just less interest after all?
(Hard to believe.) Is Windows just harder to program for? Do
Windows apps just try to do too much, and therefore not see the forest
for the trees? Are marketing and competition different when dealing with
Windows? Are GTD and productivity needs (such as Scrivener) still an
under-the-radar thing that only appeals to the same crowd who end up preferring
Macs anyway, and thus the creative people who write this software only write it
for that platform?
With the huge userbase in Windows; with powerful Microsoft
Office applications, including Word/Outlook/OneNote 2007 (all pretty good,
actually); with the new potential opened up by Vista’s WPF – I’d expect to see
a lot of leveraging of the Windows environment… apps that utilize the power of
all these key applications, but create new user interfaces (and better user
experiences) for it.
Just really curious. Look forward to hearing everyone's thoughts!
~ Alessandro (cavalierex)
