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Ground Rules for the Windows vs. Mac War
FreshlyShornBalls writes "The New York Times is running a story that I think needs to be seen by everyone on both sides of the on-going Macintosh vs. Windows debate (i.e. just about everyone who posts on Slashdot): Some ground rules for the Windows vs. Mac War." From the article: "Last week, I wrote about some of the changes Microsoft has in store for the next version of Windows, which is slated for the end of 2006. Interestingly, very few of you responded to that column, probably because so much may change in the next 19 months. But a few of you fired off diatribes about how I'm either a Microsoft 'shill' or an Apple 'apologist' (or maybe it was the other way around). It's not just me, either; it's a running sardonic joke among tech columnists that you can't even USE the word 'Apple' or 'Microsoft' without getting hate mail from somebody or other."
It's not just me, either; it's a running sardonic joke among tech columnists that you can't even USE the word 'Apple' or 'Microsoft' without getting hate mail from somebody or other."
/., its been a constant that I can always count on; rabid fans of both spouting broken record thoughts about how poor the other is.
I certainly hope no one thinks it will be any different here. In my several years reading
Seems to me both have their uses, both have their faults.
I've read this article.
Its obvious, vacuous dribble.
I condemn it.
Move along, Move along
in the long run, we're all dead anyway.
Let's get this in early.
It is entirely possible that if Mac OS X had the marketshare of Windows it would be compromised as often. 95% is a plum target.
It is important to note that OS X will never have the marketshare of Windows.
Apple is a single company. To supply the entire world's computing needs, they would have to grow to dwarf even IBM.
The question before us, then, is how much marketshare Apple would need to have for it to be compromised as thoroughly as Windows has been.
Is it 10%? 15%? Would an Apple which had 40% be so completely helpless in the face of viruses?
I doubt it. I think Windows has reached a point of critical mass, where a worm can easily assume that almost every contact in an Outlook address book is also an Outlook client running on Windows. The speed at which worms proliferate in this environment is shocking.
Firefox is starting to have some real marketshare, and remains relatively untouched. As often pointed out, Apache is the majority player in serving, but it mostly untouched. Nothing in the computing world remotely compares to what has happened to the Windows/Office collective.
Perhaps, then, the problem is not inevitable. Perhaps it is not the common outcome of having decent marketshare, but the very unusual outcome of a strikingly insecure OS with full dominance. Any system is likely to be compromised, but I urge you to consider the possibility that any other system is unlikely to be so completely unreliable.
In the meantime, Mac does have the minority share, is completely free of known viruses, and can do anything a PC can do that doesn't require very specialized software. In some hypothetical future when Apple is supplying hundreds of millions of units a year, we might have to worry about Mac security.
That time is not yet. In the meantime, every Mac that is used in place of a PC reduces Microsoft's dominance. By reducing their marketshare, we actually reduce the virus risk on their platform. We slow the spread of computer viruses in the same way condoms slow the spread of STDs. It help the user, of course, but it helps society too. If you don't have a virus, you're not spreading a virus.
Stop living in some strange dreamworld, and examine the real risks and benefits that are here *now.*
Neither of them is the perfect solution to every problem (and no, neither is Linux or any other OS). I work for an art and design college, and our labs are split about 50:50 between Windows and OS X, depending on the academic program (interior/industrial/furniture/jewelry design classes use Windows, fine arts/illustration/digital media/print media use OS X). My own home network contains multiple Windows, OS X, and Linux boxes.
So when people come to me with problems or for advice, I don't preach from the Gospel According to Steve or the Revelation to St. Bill (or the Epistles of Linus). I listen to what their needs are, and I suggest whatever offers the best solution for them.
"Mac will never be on par with Windows because of the lac (sic) of software choices."
:P
Kind of depends on what you are *doing* and what software you need. Yeah, windows has a lot more choices for software... virus scanners, trojan removes, spyware scrubbers...
"Windows are faster, they have twice as many Mhz as apple's (sic)"
Yeah, because clock speed is a direct indication of how fast the OS runs. Takes nothing about processor and bus architecture into account. A 3 MHz x86 is OBVIOUSLY twice as fast as a 1.5 MHz PowerPC.
"Windows are getting the job done..." Depends on the job. They *all* are "getting the job done".
Mac OS vs Windows vs Linux is just like anything else... they are a tool, designed to do a job. You first identify the job you need to do, then you fit the proper tool to that job. Each fills a particular niche pretty well.
You're obviously an idiot. I think that sums it up.
There's a qualitative difference between "condemning" something as immoral (crimes) and "condemning" something as useless (technology).
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Both OSes suck.
The Spinning Pizza Wheel Of Death is bloody annoying.
In true Slashdot style though, I can't imagine much worse than Windows.
Linux kinda sucks too, manufacturer support would be nice here, though there'd still be suckiness left.
I'm not intentionally trolling, it all sucks to varying degrees. Otherwise we wouldn't care.
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
Well, you're right, but:
19 Month is a lifetime is IT, so STFU
Are you trying to prove his point? The "so STFU" was utterly unecessary, and only served to detract from your argument and make you look immature.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
She would tell me never to discuss religion, politics, or operating systems in mixed company.
I have used them all and stick with Windows at home because I know how to keep it clean and stable.
I have been running Windows 2000 since late 2000 and never reloaded the OS and keep it clean as can be.
Use what you like and then go out and play in the great outdoors.
You're describing zealots of all kinds there. Swap "Mac" for "Windows", "Linux", "GNU", "closed source", "open source", "Java", "C", etc etc and you can have exactly the same kind of story.
Zealots are the problem, not Mac zealots.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
If everyone abided by this idea, about 95 percent of all the Windows-Macintosh diatribes would evaporate overnight. But here it is: If you haven't tried something, then you really have no basis to comment.
That 95% -- probably more like 99% -- of Windows fanboys have never tried a Mac, I can well believe. But the reverse? Uh-uh.
Windows is everywhere, and unavoidable. Anyone who uses a Mac, or Linux, or any other OS that's not Windows, almost certainly has made an informed decision to do so based on harsh experience with Microsoft's crap.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
The problem is, if we /don't/ go ahead and make this comparison, then Microsoft has lost on all accords, or has won on all accords, depending on which side of the fence you are on.
.Net 2, buzzword after buzzword, but no real evidence of anything. This means that either a) Microsoft's ideas are SO advanced that they're YEARS beyond us, or b) Microsoft has nothing. I know which side I'm on if you're looking at it from this perspective.
/now/. Microsoft has a fancy alt-tab skin.
If you don't make the comparison to future software, Microsoft can claim anything in the world, as they have been with Longhorn to date. WinFS, Avalon,
So what if 19 months is a long time. _Both_ companies have 19 months, and as I recall, the release cycle of OS X has seemingly hit that miraculous 18 month interval, meaning that when Longhorn actually does come out, so will Mac OS X 10.5.
At this point, we can only compare what exists, and what doesn't. Dashboard and Spotlight exist
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
Before your post I thought that this was a refreshingly short article with just one paragraph:
"The Mac-Windows war may alwsy be pointless, protracted, and winnerless. Still, I'd like to suggest, as a starting point of civility,"
I debate that "keeping Apple alive" is an upside to the existence of Apple Zealots. Being dicks to strangers wasn't necessary, and they would have kept buying Apple's stagnant products anyway.
As Pogue discusses, one thing you common to most OS zealots is that they don't know what they're talking about. I've heard so many people say, "Iduno, I'm really good with computers, but when I sit down at a (PC|Macintosh), I just don't know where to go to do anything."
That's supposed to add to your credibility, you moron?
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
...other than "tech columnists" that is. The entire world has pretty much seen about all there is to see in Windows so not much excitement there. Presumably fewer people have seen Mac but they can go down to their local outlet and check it out anytime they get the urge. Either way, this hardly seems like a 'war' between Windows and Mac. The Mac users I know don't care in the slightest who else likes it. Same for Windows users.
When TFA author says: "It's not just me, either; it's a running sardonic joke among tech columnists that you can't even USE the word 'Apple' or 'Microsoft' without getting hate mail from somebody or other." he is probably making the whole thing up. For one thing, do tech columnists really get together and tell 'running jokes.' I doubt it. Most of them seem as serious as a heart attack and for sure they never talk to other fellow tech columnists so that they won't inadvertently give away any ideas for their next article to them.
And then TFA author says "Interestingly, very few of you responded to that column..." but then gets missed by the cluebat and goes on to give his handful of readers a second dose of snooze.
I don't know anyone who's ever claimed to pick a favorite platform just to stick it to another platform's fans. Sure - people get offended or puzzled by zealotry. But who puts down chunks of cash just to upset that know-it-all fat kid?
I never went down the Mac road because I liked the commodity hardware direction happening with the IBM PC compatible crowd. And I think you'll find that is the same reason that Macs ended up in a niche market.
Great point. Keep in mind that, as others have pointed out, this should be applied to anywhere there is a coroporation (and even where corporations aren't directly involved). No specific platform or technology has a monopoly on zealotry (whether you call it that or not). And nobody is beyond criticism.
2. No condemning something until you've tried it.
If everyone abided by this idea, about 95 percent of all the Windows-Macintosh diatribes would evaporate overnight. But here it is: If you haven't tried something, then you really have no basis to comment.
There is an interesting corallary to this, which to this day amazes me. The token zealot (on either side) appears to believe that the world is divided amonst though who don't have either "competing" product, those who own A, and those who own B.
Apparently, the notion of owning - and perhaps more importantly, enjoying - both products is so counter to the agenda of your garden variety fanboy, that it is anathema to their very dogma.
(note: I'm a very happy AMD64 owner, so my opinions may be slightly biased)
It's more like Mac vs PC, Not Mac vs Windows. In fact, it should be more like OS X vs Windows.
Any Mac user is going to tell you to sell your PC all together and get a Mac. I have a real problem with this, because the problems are not usually inherant in the PC, but in the operating system that runs on the PC.
I think Mac users really need to step back and really *decide* just what it is they're fighting. If it's just Windows, well, that's all well and good. We all know Windows has some serious issues. But if you're going to try to take the PC on, I think you'll find yourself on the losing side of the battle.
Lets face it, they're (PCs) cheaper, they have a wider range of available operating systems, a wider range of hardware, more software, and there is no hardware lock-in taking place. I can get a PC from a thousand different places. If I want a Mac, I'm buying it from Apple, and getting shafted in the bank account at th same time.
Granted, you can get a Mac mini now for very little, but it really is an underpowered little machine, and for the same amount of money, I can get a PC that will outperform it.
If Apple really wants to start to have their hardware dominate the market in any way, shape or form, they really need to let other people in to help. The PC wouldn't be anywhere today if other people were not allowed to build and sell them, instead of suing anyone who tries. It's unfortunate that on one side of the coin, we have Apple boasting that they really support their users doing things with their hardware. But the instant those same enthusiests try to do something (hardware modification wise) with a Mac and resell it, they're branded as criminals.
In closing, I don't really think Apple embodies the elements of freedom that made the PC popular. It doesn't matter how many fancy cases they design, or how interesting their new hardware is. They will always be playing second fiddle to a behemoth they can't do anything about.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
What you say is true, but they way the zealotry expresses itself rubs people different ways. For example, linux zealots express themselves by talking about the technical inferiority of everything else. Windows zealots talk about compatibility, what-you-know, etc., Mac zealots argue that everything apple does different is somehow better.
Now, if you're from a design background I imagine you'd cope better with the apple zealot -- though I'm sure it would still be annoying. Being from a technical background, I can handle linux zealots, though I still find them annoying. If you're not into computers, or from a business or gamer background, I imagine the windows zealots are more tolerable too. (Extend for your other terms as necessary.)
> Altivec enables stuff like Expose.
See, this is precisely the sort of ignorance we were talking about.
sound of harps...
*prrring* It's Altivec! It's Perfect. It's Apple!.
Clasps hands together to chest, tilts head, smiles, sighs: Ahhhhhhltivec. Only from Apple!
Cut to...
Frowning: It's a god damned instruction set. Get a grip.
I am no longer wasting my time with slashdot
As you have said, alot has changed in 5 years.
make world, not war
Keep in mind, every OS has things it's good at.
Most OS's get two of the following:
Cheap - The combination of operating system, hardware, running software and updates is below or on par with the other choices.
Easy to setup/maintain - You average inept home user can shove a disk in, follow basic directions and expect to end up with working apps, sound and video and peripherals. If any problems arise they might be able to stick in a disk that came with a piece of hardware and remedy that problem without in depth knowledge of system editors. Updates should be easy to find and nearly automatic to install. Choosing and running updates should require little to no knowledge of computers. Joe user should also be able to walk in to the nearest wally world, pick up a slide scanner take it home and get it running without calling their family computer geek.
Stable - Would you want this OS controlling a robot doing eye surgery on you? Well you probably wouldn't want that in any case but you get my drift. Will this system do that it's intended to do without failure? Can the system be easily compromised due to minor operator oversight or ignorance?
On my desk sits a Mac to my left, an XP box to my right and a FC3 box straight ahead.
What the Mac does, it generally does well. Looks are obtained at the cost of speed but not so much that it makes the experience painful. It's very stable but it lacks good apps without a lot of money invested.
The Mac is the business guy in the tailored suit, a professional but he doesn't come cheap. He isn't really any better than anyone else, but he looks the part. He's pleasant to be around and if experience matters more to you than money, he's your man.
The Linux box is Fast, what it does, it generally does well. What it doesn't do by default requires endless toil and RTFM. It's rather stable and you can force it to do just about anything if you have enough time. Once you have all the stuff in the right places it's not hard to use but getting it to that point on all but the most generic hardware/software requires an experienced hand.
The Linux box is the genius teenager, You can dress it up, take it out, it's a cheap date and very able. It lacks refinement and organization but makes up for it with flexibility and low expense. If you can figure out how to motivate it, minimal investment can prove a staggering return.
The Windows box is pretty fast, fairly cheap but it takes a lot to keep it in proper condition. There's a large collection of free software that does a descent job though there's a large collection of expensive software that arguably does the job better. The biggest problem is that it will continue to work if it's not kept up to date. Eventually it will be struck down through it's unpatched insecurities. You can't leave it alone. If novices understood how important patching and not running too much cheesy third party software was, the competition would have a hard time holding on. Windows has great flexibility, unfortunately that usually comes at the cost of stability. It's all in how far you take it.
Windows is that lazy uncle that never seems to get things right. If you keep on him he's ok (if not pretty good) at what he does, just not very trust worthy if left alone. He's pretty cheap to impress and can be dressed up, you can let him house sit, but you don't trust him with your china. Whether it's society that makes him that way or his own shortcomings is irrelevant. If you need to deal with him, keep him in his place everyone will be OK.
With the exception of marketing gimics and minor tweaks in the product lines, Mac will continue to make moderately expensive hardware that gets combined with moderately expensive software with the main goal of providing a fantastic user experience to the unknowing public and a fair amount of flexibility to the experienced public that can afford the platform.
Windows will continue to be reactionary to the markets needs. They will continue to create ne
Irony: you're currently modded insightful.
;))
(Now, anyone who mods me insightful, don't - it's funny
That's very true, but as [G|g]od is my witness, I have never met a Windows zealot. I've met people who think Mac OS sucks. I used to be one before X, but I suppose the point is I'm now writing this on a powerbook.
However, I've never met anyone who is a Windows fan in the way that mac-heads are apple fans. And again, I say this as a fairly neutral powerbook owned.
It's all the fault of you people who were too stupid to buy BeOS back when it was coming out in beta and clearly better than every other operating system on the planet! Now you're stuck complaining about systems that aren't even object oriented and don't have BeFS which could have done everything Spotlight or WinFS can do or would have if people had just used BeOS so it didn't die out back before Search was king!
Well, as a fairly laid back apple fan boy, it's been my observation that Apple's fans are also some of its harshest critics. For example, when Aqua was first announced, plenty of hardcore apple websites were nitpicking it to death, despite the fact that their own exposure to it was a webcast of a demo that Steve Jobs did for a half hour.
.doc compatibility issues, and a million other things seemed to be doing their best to take the fun out of computing, even when I consciously avoid MS software.
They just tend to get really defensive when "outsiders"(meaning windows users) start criticising the mac. Partially because windows has been such a POS operating system. It's like someone driving an old rusty noisy car driving up to my cleaner, well kept vehicle and giving me crap because he doesn't like my hubcaps. Maybe my hubcaps could be better, but if you're not offering me something superior, then you're wasting my time.
Secondly, there's been a lot of bitterness because MS and their windows monopoly has made things a lot tougher for other OS'es. Their breaking HTML,
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
The polite explanation for this might be Stockholm Syndrome*. The impolite explanation is pig ignorance.
you had me at #!
Oh, you are definately underplaying linux and windows zealots. And you are forgetting things like
Free software zealots are people who think anything which isn't free software should be stolen and that the developers are bad people who deserve to be hurt. These are people who threaten me bodily harm because I upgraded from a linux desktop to a powerbook.
Microsoft zealots are people who think anything Microsoft does is hands-down the best thing in the industry, and refuse to even read reviews of other products, let alone allow evaluations. These people literally think Bill Gates shits platinum blocks. Thankfully I have not run into many of these people since school, because I choose to work for java/unix shops.
That, and I have learned to have great patience with these people, the same as I strive to show towards victoms of other types of serious disabilities.
Criticizing Microsoft for its market dominance is off the table! We should just focus on the gadgets and forget political issues like Microsoft's abuse of its monopoly status. Nope, can't criticize Microsoft for putting insecure machines in thousands of homes, diminishing the internet for everyone. Gotta get our thoughts in line with our overlords.
We're not supposed to comment on something until we've tried it. I guess I'll just have to stop advising friends until I've tried every last piece of equipment. Gotta keep those newspaper advertisers happy -- tell the masses to buy, buy, buy or shut up. (I am confused about one thing though -- if I'm not supposed to draw conclusions without trying something, why should I bother reading tech reviews?)
Schools shouldn't buy Windows becuase its what their students will encounter in the workplace. Seems like a pretty good reason to me, especially since not all students are in kindergarten -- some of them are on the verge of graduating into the job market. But I guess I must be wrong.
How do idiots like this presume to tell people how to think?
Their report was that there was a specific government report in which it was specifically said a Koran had been flushed down a toilet. The anonymous source Newsweek quoted has since told them he made a mistake, there was no such claim in the report. Accordingly, the Newsweek report itself was a single-anonymous-sourced falsehood. If it turns out the germ of the story is true, then it was completely by accident; Newsweek certainly didn't know it at the time they published it.
The question is, then, is this an effect of Newsweek being biased and accordingly lowering its standards for one juicy story to hurt the Administration; or is it an effect of Newsweek being less professional and competent across the board than the National Enquirer?
Now, if you're from a design background I imagine you'd cope better with the apple zealot -- though I'm sure it would still be annoying. Being from a technical background, I can handle linux zealots, though I still find them annoying.
In my experience:
Lots of technical types like Macs as "front end" machines and respect Unix boxes as good "back end" machines.
Comparatively few technical types like Windows (relative to their marketshare). However, they do like the cheap hardware, and were long willing to put up with Windows as a necessary mediocrity. However, as spyware and the like have exploded, this trade-off has started to look less and less desirable.
The one argument I rarely hear true technical types make is "everyone else uses Windows, so it must be better." This you get mostly from the masses.
I have a PC for work stuff (like web site planning and designing) and a mac for work stuff and play stuff. I don't see what the big fight is all about. Ignorance is bliss, I suppose.
You know, as someone who owns and uses both a Mac and a PC (thereby insuring my lack of bias), I have been saying for a while that the difference between using the two is only slightly more acute than the difference between Coke and Pepsi.
As someone who owns and uses and writes code for and maintains other people's code for and has released free software for and supports users on both Mac and Windows, I have good reason for my bias against Windows.
Despite that bias, for most of the '90s I really couldn't in all honesty recommend a Mac against a Windows box for anyone but the computerphobic: Macs were great for them, not because they were simpler to use but because they were simple to understand and because "common sense" actions actually tended to work.
But the OS was horribly kludgy and unstable if you needed more than something to run one program at a time. Multitasking on the Mac was a matter of being able to pause your use of one program, switch reasonably quickly to another, and use IT for a while.
And while Windows needed a lot of stupid maintainance (you STILL need to manually defragment the file system? I honestly find that hard to believe, but I'm assured it's so) as long as you didn't download and open untrusted files you were pretty much OK.
And there's some design decisions that Microsoft made in Windows that really were very good. The original key bindings and controls were well designed, and it was easy to work primarily with the keyboard, primarily with the mouse, or using both in concert. They did this much better than anyone else has ever done. Unfortunately since Windows 95 they've systematically undermined this, and even if they hadn't it wouldn't make up for the rest of the things Microsoft has done to Windows over the years.
Which brings me to the two things that changed my mind about recommending Windows.
First, Internet Explorer and desktop integration changes the virus threat on Windows from "if you don't do stupid stuff, you should be OK" to "if you want to be OK, you have to commit to abandoning Microsoft's browser and mail software, and sticking to it"... and for most Windows users, particularly when they hit web pages they couldn't use in Netscape, that was too much to commit to. It still is for over 90% of Windows users... even the ten or twenty percent who use Firefox don't use it exclusively or even primarily.
Second, Mac OS X meant that instead of having one of the worst operating systems under the hood, it had one of the best.
Now, I'd managed to get a few people to try FreeBSD or Linux, I used to hand out copies of the FreeBSD install disk as business cards, and I've done the same with Linux and BSD liveCDs. But it wasn't the same kind of experience for them, and they ended up back on Windows. Even I ended up using Windows as my desktop with UNIX apps running through a local X server from another computer.
But Mac OS X gives you not just the same kind of experience as Windows, with lots of good commercial software and a well integrated UI that most programs follow... it does all that BETTER than Windows does it. And, with a few exceptions, it's avoided the big "virus magnet" design flaws in Windows.
"let's get something straight. I don't love my computers. They are machines that help me work, that's all."
And THAT is the best reason of all for choosing OS X over Windows, when you have a choice, when you have to choose.
When I recommend a Mac to someone I know, I want their computer to be something that's just there, that just works. I don't want it to be a burden to them, and (and this is a selfish reason, yes, but it's an unbiased one) I don't want to have to return again and again to help them out of a jam.