Macintosh vs. Windows - AppleShooter




		Macintosh vs. Windows

This page outlines some of the virtues of the Apple Macintosh environment with due consideration for some opposing virtues of its chief rival, the Windows OS and machines that run it. Consumer debate on this issue can be quite opinionated. All I hope to accomplish here is to point out why I love and recommend Macs and hope that you concur. Typical longtime Mac users are often fiercely loyal to Apple computers and the Macintosh Operating System. Windows users have been driven by three things, price, market share and program capability. But these three pillars are subject to question.

Ease of Use - Even to this day Mac users still say that the Mac OS is more user friendly than Windows. Quite frankly, no operating system is perfect and I hate them all for being too geeky. But I have always found the Mac Operating System to be more intelligently organized and straightforward than Windows has ever been. Software for the Mac OS is generally consistent in the arrangement of pulldown menus, probably more so than varied Windows programs. And Apple has long proclaimed that Mac OS X with its Unix core, is rock solid, meaning fewer crashes than Windows. The Mac Operating System has long been superior in documentation with excellent help files backed up by tons of free tips and tech documents at the Apple company web site. In most cases you can use a Mac program and almost never need to click the "Help" menu;
Versatility - There is virtually no type of program you can buy for a Windows machine that does not exist for the Mac. This applies to small and large businesses, web designers, professionals, home users, academic users and to a large extent, even industrial users. There are thousands of software titles for Mac users. Macs can also be connected with Windows machines. And Macs can read most common documents created on Windows machines as well as save files intended for Windows users. And for those who need both platforms, you can run Windows software on a Mac using an emulation program such as Virtual PC;
Innovation - In recent years Apple pioneered Firewire (IE1394) connectivity. This is the leading method for connecting external drives. But Apple's invention is also found on just about every digital video camera on the market. Back in the cave days the Apple Mac OS was the first GUI (mouse driven graphical user interface) when Windows did not yet exist. Recently Apple became the first major company to distribute legal MP3 song files for music hungry downloaders. Meanwhile, the Apple iPod has been the most popular MP3 player on the market among both Mac and Windows users. The latest Mac machines are forever touting speeds that demonize the fastest Windows machines. And if you care about decor, Apple was first to violate the beige rule with attractive colorful shell designs and titanium notebooks. Windows machines have copied much about Macs but they are still lacking in technical and couture versatility.;
Price - Macs are cheaper in the long run but more expensive in the short run. You can buy a Windows machine for maybe five hundred dollars at an office supply store while a comparable Mac may cost at least twice that. But many Mac users will tell you that they save money because their Macs are easier to use and pose fewer critical problems. So when you consider price, take into account that your Mac may offer you significant long term savings through higher productivity, operating system stability and fewer technical nightmares. The pricing of Apple computers is not a matter of greed, Apple is a leader in innovation which reflects itself in superior products that entail significant engineering costs;

Accessories - Today, Apple machines use standard add-ons and replacement hardware available in just about any computer shop or office supply store. Thus most common hardware items that run on a Windows machine will also run on Macs built after 1998. Apple machines accept common memory (RAM) chips, AT drives, USB external peripherals and mice, CD burners, graphics tablets, projectors, flash card readers, PCI slot cards, PCMCIA notebook cards and other devices. Up until the Mac G3 Blue was introduced around 1999, Apple machines required entirely different peripherals. This all changed when company cofounder Steve Jobs was brought back and turned Apple around with a flurry of wonderful improvements. Up until that time Apple had isolated itself into a propriety niche making it hard to get Apple accessories. Those days are over;

Superior Graphics - Apple computers and the Mac OS have long been regarded as a defacto standard for graphic superiority and color control. This is important if you do digital photography or video work. More recently Apple invented the Firewire connectivity enabling almost any digital video camera to be connected to any Mac or Windows computer. Apple machines come with iPhoto for digital photo editing. You can get iMovie free for editing video. And Apple's FinalCut programs have become leaders for professional video editing.

Programming Capability - For a long time this was a key reason for buying Windows machines. Today Apple software runs on a dynamic Unix core. Most Mac users have little interest in programming. But Unix is a programmable operating system with a vast array of support connected to the open source community. The open source community is essentially challenging everything that is dark and ugly about Microsoft, namely the price of software and addiction to Windows. Unix is a highly stable OS. You can program Unix on a Mac and you can run Unix applications on a Mac although most of us are happy running Mac OS X apps;
Dynamic Web Design - You can create powerful PHP driven and Cold Fusion interactive database web sites on a Mac just as you can on a Windows machine. Windows machines also allow proprietary Microsoft ASP pages. The merits of ASP are greater than or less than the merits of Mac-friendly dynamic programming languages depending on who you talk to. Personally, I think I have seen far more PHP web sites than ASP web sites;
Shopping - You can buy a Windows machine just about anywhere. You can get Windows software at any office supply store. But do you really want it? You can also buy greasy fast food anywhere. Apple has at least two company owned stores in metro Denver and assorted Apple dealers around town. These shops offer a huge variety for Apple users unlike the tiny Apple selections offered by general computer stores. There are many monthly magazines devoted to Macs. And numerous third party catalogs sell all manner of the latest Mac hardware and software. There are local Apple user groups for beginners and pros. There is almost no end to the variety of high quality software available for Macs. You can also get plenty of freeware and shareware;
Underdog - A small segment of Mac lovers are loyal to Apple simply because they dislike the monopoly image of Microsoft and respect the fierce determination that kept Apple alive during its hardest times in the late 1990s. This type of Mac support makes a valid statement. After all, it would be a far more ghastly consumer marketplace if there were no alternative to the common "IC" (impersonal computer).
Arts - Macs have cult loyalty among a large segement of the arts community including musicians, film makers artists and art merchants. This is possibly where Macs are most popular even though the PC market is probably larger even in this area.
Why? - If Macs are so superior then why aren't they boss hog in the marketplace? The answer to that question lies in marketing. Microsoft founder Bill Gates is an absolute marketing genius. Flash back to the early 1980s. Before personal computers first went on the market, Gates had purchased the rights to a "disk operating system" that his company Microsoft then refined into "MS DOS." Gates then made a deal allowing leading computer manufacturer IBM to market personal computers with MS DOS pre-installed. You have to remember that IBM had always been the most well known computer maker on Earth because they had been marketing mainframes globally for several decades. Thus it was no surprise that IBM PCs and MS DOS became the leading standard as the personal computer user emerged. The IBM PCs had "open architecture" allowing third party companies to create accessories that plugged into these IBM PCs (and sometimes worked). A new PC software industry was born to create programs for everyday PC users. Apple came on the market with the world's first mouse driven graphical computer in 1984, before Windows was even born. Apple, in an effort to maximize machine performance and control marketing, had it's own proprietary motherboard using a unique proprietary bus. Up until about 1999, there was NuBus, Apple serial connection, Apple desktop bus, SCSI, Apple monitors, Apple printers, Apple everything. These standards were superior in their day. But they also isolated Apple into a corner of the marketing pie. The initial burst of MS DOS popularity provided by IBM meant that Apple began as the underdog and never caught up. Programmers and hardware manufacturers were thus focused on servicing Bill's mighty empire. They had little motivation to make circuit cards for Macintosh, Amiga or any other minority machine. Apple was essentially a bit elitist while it always had the best personal computing machines. But their isolation made these machines more expensive since there were higher engineering costs. Idiots at Apple fired Steve Jobs and almost drove the company into the ground. When they came to their senses and rehired him around 1998, the company began a huge turnaround. Many proprietary standards were dumped in favor of PCI bus, Universal Serial Bus (USB), standard AT drives, standard memory chips, etc. Wide standardization combined with innovations like firewire brought Apple back from the grave. Make no mistake, Macs were always superior, even when you could not get many Mac accessories at your local office supply store. Now there are Apple stores in every large city. And most peripherals designed for PCs also work on Macs and can be found everywhere. Even today Macs are still only about five perrcent of the marketplace. But Apple Computing is now a strong company. Today the biggest nemesis of Microsoft is the ever rising popularity of Linux. In my opinion as a longtime personal computer user, Apple Macintosh, Unix, Linux and the Open Source movement will be the leaders of innovation for a long time to come. And they will eventually overtake Windows as the most popular platforms for all types of personal computing. Apple stands to survive and may even gain market share if it acts upon their obvious understanding of these marketing shifts with clever and popular strategies. But if Steve Jobs gets hit by a car we are all doomed. Doooomed, I say, doooomed!!!!!!