So who’s limping? Mac or PC?
The PC vs. Mac commercials look and sound funny on occasion, but to what degree are they true, and to what degree do they represent nothing more than slick marketing?
The PC vs. Mac war has been raging for what seems nearly as long as the age-old battle of Ford vs. Chevy. People who use PCs are fairly confident in their chosen systems. Mac users also have a strong sense of loyalty to their computers. From time to time, the arguments can get messy.
For many PC users, only snobbish graphics arts types who put style over substance believe in Macs. For Mac fans, PC users are just mindless lemmings caught under Microsoft’s spell. Ouch!
But hold on a minute. Do Macs and PCs really differ THAT much? With Apple
using processors from Intel, and working with a lot of the same parts that PC companies such as Dell
and HP
use, does the difference boil down to just the operating systems (OS)?
It’s time for a brief history lesson.
Apple
Computers has been around since the mid-70s. It gets the credit for popularizing the idea of a personal computer for the home.
The notion of a ‘PC’ is really a standardized layout developed by IBM. Many other computer makers then decided to use that layout, and IBM let them.
For quite a while, Apple marched to its own drum, not allowing others to build Apple-style systems. That’s where they differed from IBM (now Lenovo)
.
In the early 90s, it seemed as the though the popularity of the PC was going to destroy Apple. But in the late 1990’s, Apple shook up the computer world when it released the iMac, a cute, easy to use all-in-one computer. Its “user-friendly” approach was based on an principle that made Apple famous in the first place. Since then, users have begun to appreciate Apple’s great sense of style as well as its stable computers. With OS X, Apple’s latest operating system, ease of use and style have become part of the user experience.
OS X is the tenth incarnation of the Mac OS, with the letter X being the roman numeral for 10…. just in case you didn’t know!
PC users typically use Microsoft’s Windows OS. Vista is now the most current version.
While there are other operating systems such as Linux that users can install on either system, OS X and Windows share by far the largest piece of the pie.
The differences between the two operating systems are easily the biggest hurdle for people when they move from PCs to Macs, or vice versa. Both OS use somewhat different perspectives how to approach the computer and its parts.
We’ll touch on those differences a bit later.
Needless to say, Microsoft and Apple
both want you to use their software, especially now that Macs can run either Windows XP and Vista– using Boot Camp, Parallels, or VMware Fusion. Both are also working hard to make the computer an easy and safe place for you to conduct your computing.
Before the switch to Intel processors, Macs used PowerPC processors manufactured by an Apple—IBM—Motorola alliance. These chips differed quite a bit from the x86 style of chips that Intel
and AMD
made. Both types of processors had their strengths and weaknesses. Proponents of either side of the argument have been using those strengths and weaknesses as their main talking points.
The short-short reason for the switch is that Motorola had been making many other products beyond processors, and found it difficult to focus on the development of their processors. Intel and AMD
, on the other hand, have had no such problems, and advanced at a rate far faster than Motorola could maintain. In a nutshell, that was why that Apple
eventually switched to Intel processors in 2006.
This required Apple to make massive changes in the code to the OS X operating system so that it could run on the Intels x86 hardware. But the end result was worth it, as users now had a stylish and stable computer that could now run just as fast as a PC. Besides all of that, it can also effortlessly run Windows XP, making a Mac the only computer some would need.
Apple was back in the game.