GIS for Mac Redux
[UPDATE July 17, 2008] c|net reports: "The Mac owns the US." and proceeds to tell us that Apple's Mac sales grew 38 percent in Q2 2008 in the US, while Windows has slowed to a 4.2 percent growth crawl in the US. Or, as Adena puts it in her comment below: "The tide is turning."
Generally I do not publish web traffic numbers for my websites, but this is a stat I want to share.
For what it’s worth, my GIS for Mac? blog post quickly shot to the top ten traffic getters on this blog, and has been there, firmly, for over a year now. Getting a steady traffic stream from all over the world. Last several hits – from the US, UK, Ireland, New Zealand, US, Italy, US, Canada…
I wonder if there is a message here that goes unheeded. If I were a Mac developer, I would give GIS a serious thought. If I were a GIS developer, I would give the Mac platform a serious thought.
For the record, I am still not a Mac user. Perhaps because my GIS still does not run on a Mac…





I use QGIS and uDig if I need to visualize GIS data on my Mac. GDAL/OGR runs just fine under OS X, Linux, and Windows and does a great job of converting/projecting many formats, even to KML if I want to use Google Earth.
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I think the tide is turning. My sense is that as we move to the cloud, more GIS will be done on the Mac, even if it's "only" the client. (My editorial on my move the Mac ran this week: http://www.directionsmag.com/article.php?article_id=2811)
I see GIS programmers and management types with Macs and the AAG (Association of American Geographers, an academic group) meeting in Boston was full of them.
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Adena:
Great editorial, but can't find it through the Directions UI.
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Thanks for pointing it out so we can get it solved.
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