What we have here is...

PayPal is dealing with some unintended fallout regarding a smart policy decision.

The online money folks made a smart decision last week and put out a press release. The original news: PayPal to Block Users With Old Browsers. All well and good; PayPal is a regular phishing target.

But the news items and press around the announcement were not clear enough. From the article above: "PayPal said a 'significant' group of people still use Microsoft's Internet Explorer 3, released in 1996, and IE 4, which debuted in 1997. Those browsers lack a phishing filter, which can block users from accessing a reported phishing Web site." The article later notes that "Apple's browser -- Safari -- does not" have a phishing filter.

Cue melodrama, and the follow-up news this morning: PayPal Denies Plan to Block Safari. Which, of course, was not the original news item. But PayPal neither a) provided a list of blocked browsers nor b) listed modern browsers like Safari as safe for use, at least nowhere I've looked.

The lack of clarity created a situation that ran far afield of the original intent. Instead of being heralded as encouraging safe ecommerce, PayPal found itself dispelling rumors that angered the Macintosh audience. A little more communication and transparency would have ended the excitement before it began.

Wither Windows?

So quite recently, the Ruby on Rails open source web framework announced that they would be migrating from the Subversion code repository they had to a new one managed by Git.  Git is a version control system created by Linus Torvalds to manage the Linux kernel.  Linus had several requirements in mind when he made Git, requirements that involved specific sets of features, scaleability, stability etc.

As might be expected from the creator of the Linux kernel, none of these requirements included running well on Windows.

Git does technically run on Windows, but its kind of a hack, and Redmond's favorite platform is definitely treated like a second class citizen (ooh... irony...).  So naturally when Rails moved to Git, there was a number of Windows users who were concerned they were being left behind.  Interestingly, the Rails maintainers responded that amongst the core developers of Ruby on Rails, Windows users were a small minority.

So then, in this other piece I was reading (I need to see at least two things before I declare an Official Trend) John Dvorak rips on Dell, claiming they're stuck in a 90's mentality.  In the article, he says Dell isn't keeping up and startups in Silicon Valley these days tend to use laptops, and many many of these laptops are Macs.

Even Senator Schmelkin, a long time Windows guy, switched completely over to a Mac a couple of months ago (I tried to get him to blog it...sorry, no luck...).

Okay - I knew Apple was getting a boost from the whole  iPod thing, but I never expected to see quite this level of momentum (and yes, yes...I'm sure in the accounting and parking facility businesses Windows still has 18456% market share...).  There seems to be an accelerating trend, especially in the software and web world where not only is it more desirable to work on a Mac, but its beginning to look like people are beginning to take the position that Windows doesn't matter.  It's like it's deprecated.

(Disclosure - I was a Mac guy from before it was cool, except for a span of about 5 years that I spent trying to install Linux on a laptop).

The Rails guys do tend to be a bit religious at times - "my way or the highway".  But I do find the basis for their switch interesting.  The lack of first-class support for Windows was simply not a consideration.  Has the world finally changed?  Is the wicked witch finally dead?