US Gov't site excludes Mac users

[bwh2]

full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/12/AR2006021200942.html

@Washington Post

What if the federal government were about to give away more than $400 billion in grants, but only people whose computers ran on Microsoft software could apply?

That is the predicament that many scientists, scholars and others say they are in as the government enters the final phase of its five-year effort to streamline its grant-application process.

The new “Grants.gov” system, under development at a cost of tens of billions of dollars, aims to replace paper applications with electronic forms…

The overall Grants.gov system, under construction by Northrop Grumman under a $22 billion federal contract, attracts more than 1 million hits every day, Havekost said…

The PureEdge solution, it turns out, works only with the Windows operating system. And that is especially galling, several scientists said, as at least one major grant-making agency, the National Science Foundation, has for many years been using a “platform-independent” system that works seamlessly with all kinds of computers…

Mike Atassi, program manager for Grumman’s Grants.gov system integration team and an avowed fan of Macintosh computers, said the choice of PureEdge was logical given that the contract demanded full implementation within seven months and because more than 90 percent of computer users nationwide use PCs…

i think if you gave me $22 billion and 7 months, i could put together a decent team and a platform-independent product.