After NIH Image had been established, Rasband started thinking about expanding its capabilities to any operating system, not just the Mac. He saw increasing interest in the Scion Image program due to it running on Microsoft Windows and yet frustration that it didn’t work as well as NIH Image. He also saw the danger in having a separate Windows program both in terms of support and in diluting the user base and plugins. Yet the climate and timing was such that he felt he had to have a solution beyond the Mac platform. The late 1990s was a notable period in Apple history as the Mac was in a period of decline with the PC rapidly gaining ground. In scientific research the Mac still had a loyal following but it too was being eroded, both due to technology only available on the PC platform and the lower hardware cost of the PC. Rasband faced a major challenge; how to continue a program for the Mac and yet support the PC. Rasband did not want to port NIH Image to the PC and didn’t want to maintain two programs or trust a third party to maintain one.
