Why Can't Apple Write Decent Windows Programs?

If there's one thing that I hate on my Windows machine, it's iTunes. It's slow. It's bloated. It has a mismatched theme and an often-glitching interface. The only reason I have it on my system in the first place is because that's the only way I'm able to put music on my iPod Touch.

Yet.

On my school's iMacs, iTunes is zippy. The music management system is easy to use, simple, and has very aesthetically-pleasing animation/graphics. It looks amazing accompanying the rest of the Mac theme of brushed metal.

The same rings true with another Apple-to-Windows program, Safari. On Windows, Safari runs far, far slower than even Internet Explorer 8 (LifeHacker Link: http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2009/06/cold__warm_starts.png). On a Mac, the new features render beautifully and speedily, such as that tab overlook tool. I mean, the scaling renders nearly instantaneously.


So what's the big deal, Apple?

I can reason it down into three things; Accidental, Apathetic, and Designed, respectively:

1. The porting of code from Mac OS X to Windows deteriorated the quality of the program.
2. The programmers decided that it wasn't worth their time to make sure the program worked as well under Windows as it does under Mac OS X.
3. Apple makes the Windows versions run worse so that people think that Mac OS X just runs better.

To be honest, I think it's a combination of the three. Porting code isn't perfect. But once the errors and sluggishness came up, the programmers didn't spend time to fix it because if it looks like the Windows version runs slower and more bugged out, then more people will think that the Mac version runs better because Apple computers are better, somehow.


Not to be cynical, but damn. That's a good business strategy. Much unlike Microsoft's blunder to sell Microsoft Office on Apple computers, something that I'll touch upon in a later post.