Site hosted by Angelfire.com: Build your free website today!

Chain Links| My guestbook| Writing|Seth's Pictures|Quotes

Mac vs. Windows: It's All About Choice

I wrote this paper for my English professor at UC Davis. She's a old Mac fan, and wanted an explanation as to why she likes her ocmputer (a Performa 6360 running OS 7.6) so much.

I recently received an email from an old high school “friend” outlining his hatred for the Apple/Macintosh brand, and everything they stand for. Now rest assured, this email was not unsolicited, I had emailed him a few days before receiving this email asking for his reasoning on why he so despises Apple Computer, and more specifically, the Mac operating system. I did this for the sake of this paper: a look at the Mac, its similarities/differences from the PC, and found that a person’s preference between the two relies solely on choice.

Yep, that’s what it all boils down to. You have to ask yourself two questions to make this choice: do I know what I want my computer to do? and, do I know how to make it do that? You’d be surprised how many people get a computer, unpack it from its box, get it all set up on their desk, turn it on, and not have a bloody idea what to do next. Dilemmas like this happen to the best of us: we have a task to accomplish, but the road to that task is hidden from us in the virtually indecipherable babble of technophiles and support agents.

I firmly believe that this difficulty can be easily avoided by the computer you choose to use. Key word here: choice. I’m not forcing my opinion upon you, the reader, or anyone else, but simply putting forth what I hope is a logical and easy to understand argument. I won’t hide it from you: I am pro-Mac, and proud of it.

Now please note that the Mac’s history, in all its splendor, is not without blemishes of its own. In the pre-OS X days, it was said Macintosh stood for Many Applications Crash, If Not, The Operating System Hangs. There is a logical explanation for this: all operating systems are based on what is called a kernel: in the simplest of terms, it’s kind of like the center keystone that holds up an archway. Mac OS’s 1-9 were all based on what is known as the Macintosh kernel, which was a unique piece of programming, in that it was not based on any previous non-Apple OS. In its structure, the Mac kernel was very, very hard to work with; Apple engineers had to do an amazing amount of fine tuning and fancy wiring in order to accomplish the simple task of segmenting memory (RAM). Built upon from OS 1 to OS 9, the Mac kernel was growing unstable, since it had been altered so much to keep up with its competitors. Thus, Apple created OS X.

Unlike previous home operating systems, new the Mac OS X was based on UNIX, the first “multi-user” OS ever made. What makes UNIX, and OS X, so different from the Windows operating system is its stability. Since the UNIX OS was designed from the ground up to be used by large office or corporate computer servers, stability was a must. In a server, if one section of it crashes, it can potentially affect every computer on the network. UNIX isolates computer stations and programs to keep a crash from having a domino effect on the rest of the system.

Apple’s OS X kernel, known as the “Darwin” kernel, uses this UNIX system to keep your programs isolated. What this means is that in the unlikely event of a program malfunctioning or crashing, only the afflicted program is closed. You can then go on with the task at hand without restarting your computer or losing unsaved data in any other applications that may be running at the same time. In Microsoft’s Windows OS, when one program goes down, the user is presented with what some call the “blue screen of death.” This screen reads something like this, “CRITICAL SYSTEM ERROR. Press any key to continue.” Upon the pressing of a key, your computer restarts, and all unsaved data is lost and all programs are closed. So why does Microsoft let this happen? Why don’t they patch their kernel and thus fix their OS? Well, the problem with Windows lies far, far too deep for Microsoft to fix: there are in fact several core problems with the Windows OS that many of its users know nothing about.

The most notable of these problems is security. If you’re a Windows user, you undoubtedly have heard of or have been affected by the recent rash of computer viruses and worms running amok over the Internet. This past summer the W32.Blaster.Worm program wreaked havoc worldwide, shutting down offices and schools everywhere. As Robert Pegoraro of the Washington Post puts it, “"In its default setup, Windows XP on the Internet amounts to a car parked in a bad part of town, with the doors unlocked, the key in the ignition and a Post-It note on the dashboard saying, ‘Please don't steal this.’” Such system vulnerabilities are default settings when you buy a Windows-based computer: Windows ships with five security ports open to attack. These ports are like doorways, through which both good and bad programs can travel. The most infamous of which is the Personal File Sharing port, through which files and programs can be exchanged: such files can easily include the W32.Blaster.Worm program. Mac OS X has zero ports open for use when you first get your Mac, meaning that the user has to consciously turn them on in order for a file to be shared.

Also in the email from my Mac-hating “friend” was the complaint that Mac’s don’t have the “quality or quantity of software” that PC’s enjoy. In one sense, he was right: there are fewer software titles available for the Mac platform versus the PC/Windows platform. But if you’re a Windows user, ask yourself this: just how many of those fifteen ka-billion applications do you actually use? And how many will actually fit on your computer at once? Chances are you have a core set of applications that you use, and you won’t ever see a need to use any of the thousands of freeware or shareware programs out there.

Furthermore, the quality and craftsmanship of software titles between the Mac and the PC is amazingly different. Take, for example, the iLife suite of applications: iPhoto for digital photos, iMovie for digital video editing, iDVD for DVD encoding and burning, and the famous iTunes for digital audio (MP3) management and listening. Each of these programs (all designed by Apple Computer) work seamlessly together. Editing a movie in iMovie? You have easy access to your iTunes music library to add songs to your film. Listening to a song in iTunes? When you insert a DVD into your computer to watch, iTunes automatically pauses the song it’s playing and starts the DVD playing. You can even create a slideshow of pictures from iPhoto on a DVD disc you can burn yourself using iDVD. Everything works, when it is supposed to work: that’s the beauty of Macintosh.

You could almost say that Microsoft has shot itself in the foot with Windows: since so many different companies develop software for it, there are bound to be conflicts between programs. While watching a DVD on my roommates’ Windows PC his screen saver activated, locking down his computer and requiring his password be entered and the DVD application restarted. Conversely, when a DVD is played in a Mac computer, OS X automatically pauses all other activity going on in the background: be it audio playing or a screen saver activating. All this ties into another reason Mac users love their computers so much: the interface. Commonly known as a GUI (graphical user interface), the Mac OS X GUI is known as Aqua. Apple had a core of designers known as “human interface engineers” that set out to design a GUI that felt natural and easy to use. There are little things that make the Aqua GUI different from Windows and other operating systems: when you minimize a window, the window gets gracefully sucked down into the dock (a customizable area at the bottom of your screen where all your frequently used applications reside) where you can click on it later for a similar, but opposite, effect. When you launch an application that is on your desktop it instantaneously expands and springs out at you before the application or file opens. The latest Mac OS X release, Panther (version 10.3), sports a new Aqua innovation: Exposé (pronounced ecks-poh-say). With the push of a customizable button, Exposé instantly tiles all of your open windows and scales them down, neatly arranging them so you can see what’s in every single one. You then click on the desired window, which is then brought to the foremost position. With the push of another button, Exposé moves all open windows to the edge of your screen, allowing you to instantly see your desktop.

So where does it all lead? To a simple choice, that’s where. I’ve done my homework, and made my choice, based on some obvious (and aforementioned) reasons. I feel that the Mac is a superior system, made with superior hardware by a highly innovative company. I wouldn’t say I am a PC-hater, just that the Windows operating system is lacking in too many ways for me to justify using it. That said, it comes down to a preference and a choice: I hope you make the one that is best for you.

This site was made on a Mac© using Macromedia Dreamweaver MX.
Site owned and operated by Seth DuVernay.
©2003 Seth DuVernay