Genealogy programs in various operating systems

I get the question all the time as to whether or not you can do genealogy on an Apple Macintosh computer. The answer is a decided yes, but there are not so many offerings as their are on the Windows side of the world. I always hesitate to talk about genealogy programs specifically, because there are so many good ones out there that I don't want to give the impression that I favor one over another. I always give the analogy, if I were building a house and had hammer and screw driver, do you think I might buy a few more tools. Well, the same thing goes for my view of genealogy programs. There are lot of different programs they have different capabilities and strengths. I use quite a few of them all the time.

One thing is apparent, from a news article in the tech press today, that the battle of the operating systems is simply a match between Apple and Microsoft, but Linux is garnering an increasing percentage of the operating system market. Valid statistics are almost impossible to obtain, but some online studies show Linux growing much faster than Windows 7, but falling behind the growth of Windows 8. But Linux still garners less than 2% of the operating system market.

For all the hype, Apple's OS X systems have also got single digit or less market penetration. Windows 7 and XP have more than an 80% market share. So where is the incentive for the existing Windows genealogy programs to migrate to Apple or Linux? Many of them may do so, but the migration has yet to become mandatory simply on the basis of the popularity of the operating systems.