In a day of accelerating Macintosh market share (Windows is still over 90% of the market…though declining) and where Internet-centric applications, communications and participatory social media make your device choice less relevant, I’m taken aback when a vendor the size of Linksys (owned by Cisco) announces a brand new, very affordable ($120 or $99 street price) stand-alone webcam that only supports Windows.
Linksys’ User Guide says this in the FAQ, “The Camera is designed for computers running a Windows operating system and Internet Explorer 5.5 or higher. You cannot view video on a Macintosh.“
This lack of support is not what many people experience with, for example, their ISP (mine is Comcast) who often state, “Ahh…we don’t support the Macintosh” but it turns out they don’t because they don’t have that machine sitting in front of them to troubleshoot nor has the ISP’s customer service group created scripts for the clueless drones to read.
This is no exaggeration: Out of the 100 or so geeks and early adopters that I know, well over 90% of them use Macs. Most have RAM maxed out and are using Parallels to run Windows and Linux within a virtual container inside of Mac OS X (I do the same thing, though mostly for goofin’ around vs. serious geek work). Every company chases influencers — especially in a day where social media is exploding and people want guidance as complexity increases — so it’s really puzzling why Linksys would turn its back on influencers.
Steve’s Social Stuff