¶ … Macintosh Operating System in 1984, there has been a battle resembling the Coke and Pepsi War, this time between the Macintosh/Apple OS and Windows. Ironically, the battle has also bled over to the new electronic revolution of the 21st century -- the Smart Phone. This time, it is a three part battle between Apple's I-Phone, Google's Android OS, and Windows Mobile. In the personal computer world, though, there remain really two choices -- the PC Platform or the Macintosh platform. Clearly, every user has their own opinion on which is best, which has better programs, support, hardware, and price vs. reliability. One caveat when doing a comparison: there is only one authorized Macintosh producer -- Apple; there are literally hundreds of PC manufacturers, including those made from parts from various companies and built at home by the end user. Despite opinions, though, we can certainly begin our analysis with a comparison chart:
Issue
The Mac Platform
PC Platform
Comments
Stability
Macs more stable because it separates most programs from OS and each other
All Windows components are somewhat connected
Different philosophy about tagging programs; Windows is slower in program connection as well.
Security
Mac has yet to be threatened by a major security breach
Windows is notorious for viruses and security issues
Market share numbers mean higher vulnerability
Reliability
Less crashing, movement of files and folders more reliable
Some locations on the computer are harder to access.
PCs crash more often than Macs
Multimedia
Superior hardware for DTP, music, graphics
Better equipped than every
Less an overall market for design than information management
Affordability
PC - Who's Really Winning?, 2011; McCracken, 2010)
From the perspective of the Operating System, there are two divergent philosophies. Mac began as a graphical user interface, PC's evolved from DOS and more information based. Mac is faster in opening and closing the system, and has a platform that allows quicker access to ROM and RAM, allowing reading and writing data quicker. Windows must access information multiple times. Both systems have undergone tremendous changes since 1984, but the Mac certainly pushed the innovation button and forced PC engineers into innovation.
For instance, as computers and mobile technology grew smaller, and memory less expensive, the push towards larger, more complex, graphics and multi-tasking became even greater. Gone were the days in the late 1980s in which the popular view was that one would never ever need to…
