PCs vs. Macs

This is my take on the issue. I'm not particularly biased since I don't like Microsoft, I just don't view Apple as superiour. I watched all the Mac ads- they're pretty funny, but just a little bit slanted, so I decided a comparison would make an interesting post.

Stability: Mac OS X is more stable than Windows. That's quite obvious. But Windows has gotten a lot better in terms of stability, and while Apple would love to claim that their OS doesn't ever fail spectacularly, the programs still crash and data is still lost forever. And I haven't even had "Oshit where'd my work go!?" happen to me on Windows, but I've probably been lucky.

Security: Viruses and spyware don't afflict Macs. Make it more popular, and they will. To a far lesser extent, of course, since Windows appears to have security holes large enough to sail a battleship through, but while Windows security is improving, Mac's security can only go downhill as their popularity increases. And since I'm a fairly competent PC-user, viruses and spyware don't bother me all that much.

Those awesome nifty programs: OOO SHINY. If I had a Mac, I'd have software to edit the movies I don't film, make slideshows of the pictures I don't show off, the music I don't play, and the schedule I'll ignore. And I can use Office now, which I don't have anyways! And I can play all those games- wait, no, Dawn of War doesn't have a Mac version. But I can just boot my Macbook in PC mode! Or maybe I'll burn my money and snort the ashes, because I'm wasting the money either way. I'm sarcastic because the ads push the idea that you can run all these amazing programs, except their built-in programs aren't amazing, and to run Windows programs you need to buy Windows.

Familiarity: I'm already fairly familiar with Windows. Yes, I could learn how to use Macs, but my (admittedly limited) experience with the OS is that you can't do as much as on a PC because they don't let you mess around as much. I haven't owned a Mac, so I haven't tried doing unorthodox things, but for instance I couldn't take my music off my Ipod, which was irritating as all my music was in Berlin. (There are probably programs that do it for you, but I'd like to do it myself so I know how it works.)

Summary: Macs have advantages over PCs, but they're not worth switching to. Besides having to get used to doing things the Mac way, there are things I can't do and games I can't play. And they're more expensive (a slightly worse Macbook costs about $300 CAD more than my laptop did.) Besides, if I were really irritated with Windows, I'd switch to Linux, not Mac.

What we really need is an OS that takes all the good things from Windows, Mac, and Linux, and combines it into the OS to end all others. But that's not going to happen as neither Microsoft nor Apple would benefit, no other company could break in to the market like that, and Linux is already a product of the people but it obviously has flaws. So Windows it is, for now.