I have got a Mac recently, I actually wanted one for quite some time. Before I got a Mac I was, for a while, a part of the ongoing discussion on Mac vs PC comparison. I was reading posts on the subject, listening to podcasts and marveling the Steve Jobs keynotes. I was getting a lot of how Mac was better in so many ways and so on and so forth. Until I got a Mac of my own and discovered a very important thing about a Mac and a PC. They are exactly the same.
What??? Yes, yes. They are. In every practically important aspect they are exactly the same.
Here is the list of examples that I came up with.
Apple is bragging about Mac OS X not having any viruses. I haven't had a virus on a PC for seven years now. Apple is bragging about the ease of use and how things just work. For me, using Windows XP is just as easy and stable. Design flaws? They both have some. See the window switching on Mac OS X, it's really horrible.
Media? Same thing. Yes, the Mac comes with a remote and turns into some sort of media center, neat indeed. But don't get me started about iTunes or Quick Time, they are incredibly bad. So in the end I use BSPlayer on Windows and VLC on Mac and I use plain old folders to keep my stuff.
Development tools? Well, eclipse runs everywhere. I had hard time finiding a good text editor for both. I settled for UltraEdit for windows long time ago, on Mac I am currently on jEdit which is not that good but it does the job.
The Office suite is almost the same, so are all other productivity tools which for most of the world are online anyway. Yes there may be some amateur editing apps bundled with every Mac but for the heavier stuff you quickly move to the very same Photoshop and more professional video editing software.
Speaking about hardware, sure Macs are pretty, but there are beautiful PCs out there as well. Sony makes some great looking notebooks and for the desktops there are great looking cases coming from Thermaltake and Antec, not to mention modds and customs. Glossy displays have also become a common experience today as well.
That's enough, though there is much more. To sum this all up. Regardless which platform you get, you will require a lot of tinkering before you get it just the way you want it for this period of your life, after which it is a smooth ride until something changes.
For all practical purposes, Mac and PC are exactly the same.
The paradox of insular language
7 months ago
3 comments:
I'm really wondered to here those things from such a faithful fan of Steve Jobs ;-)
If I get it right, you are not a fan of iPhone as well.
Steve Jobs is a great man. Period. I like him a lot, for a long list of reasons starting from him being one of the fathers of a PC and up to being a great presenter whose keynotes I never miss.
There is no doubt Apple is moving in the right direction, and I am not talking about the stock which is through the roof. They are minded to make great products and I think this is just an attitude that every company should have.
It's not that I am saying the Microsoft and Apple are the same. It's just that for me using a computer, even Mac, involves so much tinkering and messing around that it really makes the experiences similar. Every platform has high point and low points and the process of figuring them out is in fact very similar. Or let me put it this way, the amount of swearing is almost exactly the same for both XP and Mac OS X.
Sad but true
Post a Comment