Taking on Q: Apple vs. Microsoft
October 20th, 2006
Recently, there was a posting at See One, Do One, Teach One regarding the release of IE7. If you look closely at the comments, they were infiltrated by an Apple enthusiast, namely Quinn (What’s cooking at Tech-Recipes). I feel bad for him, no one responded to his commentary, I am sure he is suffering from being left out. We can’t have that, can we?
First, you need to understand that Quinn has slipped way into the dark side, as seen in his post about getting his new MacBook Pro (see Christmas in October?). The poor guy’s mind has obviously been poisoned. I recommended that he pick up a Bible and note that an apple was the downfall of man. If you look at Apple’s logo, you realize that they even flaunt that point by using an apple with a bite out of it. When confronted on this, he did make a valid point of the fact that the word apple isn’t mentioned in Genesis, but then fell back into a Mac-trance and stated that the pictures of Eve holding an apple were all some marketing spin by Microsoft. He then went to Google and did some research with the following results:
“microsoft is evil” -> 54,100 results
“apple is evil” -> 647 results
“bill gates is satan” -> 490 results
“steve jobs is satan” -> 45 results
Obviously, his Mac-trance induced state is telling him that more people think that Microsoft is the bad guy. I, however, see a much different message in these search results. The Google results show that Apple users write far more garbage than do Microsoft users. It really isn’t their fault though. It probably is coming out of a mixture of boredom and frustration stemming from having to use the software. Microsoft users are far more productive and therefore have much less time or reason to write such material and post it on the web.
Now, as far as his comments on IE7. First of all, IE7 is designed to run on quality operating systems, that is why you found no download for your system. I’m sorry for this, hopefully they will be able to find some way to lower its requirements. I was going to try OS X, but found that none of my important and necessary software would run on it. I guess they are trying to reduce their requirements as well.
Now for my top ten list, we’ll aim at what’s wrong with OS X (exercising my creative license):
- Responsible for the U.S. dependency on fossil fuels.
- Responsible for the depletion of the Amazon Rain Forest.
- Disguised itself as IE7 and put diesel fuel in Quinn’s gasoline vehicle.
- Created nicotine and caffeine addiction.
- Secret distributor of all news stories found in the National Enquirer.
- Responsible for anal leakage being an acceptable side effect of fat substitutes.
- Originator of every bit of spam in your inbox.
- Responsible for placing Little Richard in that Geico commercial.
- Created all political ads that interrupt your TV shows.
- Causes gingivitis and tooth decay.
Okay Quinn, I know you’re itching to get back at me. Just remember to type slowly so your laptop can keep up with you.
October 20th, 2006 at 9:41 pm
I’m surprised that you didn’t make the connection with your nice chess piece image up there and the lack of follow-up comments on Davak’s blog post. Can you say checkmate?
It’s interesting that you make the assumption that the 54,100 results for “microsoft is evil” come from Apple users. Let’s add Mac to the search: “microsoft is evil” mac: 16,100 results. Hmm.. the vast majority of those posts don’t mention Mac. My theory is that, once a windows victim overcomes their abusive relationship with microsoft and sees the light and makes the easy move over to the wonderful world of Apple, they no longer harbor the stress and resentment toward their operating system and have no reason to vent about it. There is a brief “how could I have put up with windows for so long” adjustment period when venting is certainly justifiable.
Actually, reading through the first page of results from Google’s “microsoft is evil” search, I did find one reference to a Mac. A Microsoft employee defended that MS is not evil… and wrote that on his Apple Powerbook. Other than that, no Apple or Mac related content that I saw in the top ten results.
I think it’s sad how Microsoft fundamentalists immediately get defensive about their beloved operating system. “Microsoft users are far more productive…” Defensive people tend to make broad accusations without any effort to make any quantitative justification. I feel that someone who has extensive experience with both platforms would have a more trustworthy perspective on the issue of which platform is more productive. I can say with certainty that having to reboot a PC several times a day definitely hindered my productivity. I’ve never rebooted my Mac for performance reasons or because it gave up the OS ghost. I’ve never had to kill an unresponsive application. My CPU has never railed at 100% for no good reason. I’m not afraid to connect to a foreign network and contract some nasty virus or worm that will require me to reinstall my OS. I’m just curious… how much time have you logged with OS X?
Even qualitative justifications are absent. Hyperbole is their main offense.. “none of my important and necessary software would run on it.” None? Really? You write a lot of MS Office recipes (which are totally awesome, btw). I’d assume that one or more components of the Office suite are important or necessary to you. And, oh, that’s right, they run on OS X. David scoffed at me when I told him months ago that I was forsaking Windows and switching over to Mac, he didn’t believe it would work because he’s bought the lie that there is no software available for Mac. Other than getting files off my old windows box, I haven’t touched it since I switched. There are no software packages I need to do my work and play that I haven’t found and found better on my Mac.
Something interesting thing I read about today.. that the name of Microsoft’s new Zune product is very close to the F-word in Hebrew. Way to go with the product research! But wait, it does open up new venues of comparing MS execs to other villainous characters from history. Heil Microsoft!
October 20th, 2006 at 10:33 pm
Okay Q, you get Round 1. However, you receive a penalty point for including a compliment about me in your argument (although I greatly appreciate it). Stay tuned for Round 2 . . .
October 21st, 2006 at 7:12 am
Quinn,
What about video playback capabilities? OS X comes with QuickTime while Windows uses the Windows Media Player. Right off the bat there are some major weaknesses coming from MacLand. There is no full screen support, no playlist support, no MPEG-2 suppoort, and you have to put up with the message to Upgrade to Pro (not to mention the icons for the Pro edition throughout the menus). WMP offers all of this plus there is no need nor pressure to upgrade to anything else. I will concede that OS X does come with a DVD Player while Windows does not, but even with that failure to provide the user with a fully functional video player is a definite minus.
October 21st, 2006 at 7:13 am
Another area of concern is in regards to compressed files. OS X cannot browse ZIP files without first decompressing them. Furthermore it cannot open encrypted ZIP files or add files to an existing ZIP file. Windows XP can do all of this by default.
October 21st, 2006 at 10:39 am
Ah, thank you for your graciousness about round one.
There are plusses and minuses about all media players. I have to say that in all the years I endured Windows, I never used WMP very much. I also didn’t use Quicktime much. There are third party players that work better than both, so I don’t think that’s much of an issue. I’ve always been frustrated by the whole codec issue with the media files supposedly supported by WMP. In my experience, the odds of downloading an AVI and getting it to play in WMP are about 25%. MS didn’t manage the format so there are so many proprietary codecs. Doesn’t make for a fun user experience, that’s for sure. On the other hand, if you have a .mov, Quicktime will open it.
My MacBook Pro came with a cute little remote with controls similar to an iPod shuffle. With it I can control FrontRow, a beautiful app that allows access to my music, pictures, videos, and DVD playback. If you haven’t seen it, drop into an Apple store or ask a Mac enjoyer to show it off. Interesting that fullscreen playback is possible there. Of AVI files from my digital camera. I bought into the Windows Media Center Edition a few years ago, back when I was fully vested in the dark side. I have to say, “bleeeh” to MCE. Unstable. I was going to list other negatives, but that was enough. If it doesn’t work reliably, it’s not cool. No matter how beautiful it might look, I want it to go when I push play.
So, let’s talk about file archives. Actually, the ability to pop into a ZIP file in an explorer window is cool. But so is the ability to access ZIP files from the command line. Yeah, not that many people may do it, but, come on, what’s another 100KB executable in the vast C:\WINDOWS wasteland? What that means is that you can’t script archiving operations in a batch file without downloading a third party tool. Pity. Oh, and how does explorer handle a tar.gz or tbz file? Oh, it can’t? Not from the command line, either? Pity. OS X finder can uncompress those, too. And can do it from the command line. Zips, too. I didn’t know about the encryption limitations of zipping in OS X. That could be because, in the 15+ years I’ve been using ZIP files, I’ve never downloaded an encrypted one nor encrypted something in one myself. I can’t count how many times I’ve cursed Windows for not handling gzipped tar files which are quite common.
Is that all you’ve got?
October 21st, 2006 at 11:03 am
Just warming up, Q. Relax, righteous responses relaying reality require responsible research.
October 21st, 2006 at 2:08 pm
I’m not picking sides here.
However, if we are quoting useless numbers…
“bill gates is satan� -> 490 results
“steve jobs is satanâ€? -> 45 results
The problem is that apple only has 5% of the market. Therefore, all numbers should be corrected for this fact.
Therefore, if steve jobs was equal in evil to bill gates, there should have been only 24.5 results (5% of 490).
45 > 24.5 therefore steve jobs is more evil.
Of course, that is really silly.
But it does bring up the point…
If Microsoft is so evil (bad, sucks, etc), why do they have the majority of the market?Â
October 21st, 2006 at 3:43 pm
Oh, David.. he’s so cute.
Of all restaurants, McDonald’s has the most market share. Is their food the best? Is it the healthiest?
But if Taco Bell required one of their tacos to be sold with every meal purchase at most every other restaurant, they’d have the most market share. And I’d say “whooooopidie dooo” to that, too.
October 21st, 2006 at 4:48 pm
Nice strawman attempt.
I was expecting this instead:
Expensive car A (lamborghini) has less marketshare than cheaper car B (ford). Does that make B the better car?
(returning to lurker mode)
October 21st, 2006 at 5:05 pm
Okay, time for some rules. Since it is my blog, I get to make them. There are only two:
1. No comparisons with anything with “Mac” in it. This can lead to confusion. Quinn mentioned McDonald’s which have Big Mac’s in them so that would be an illegal comparison.
2. No referring to other participants in this commentary as “cute.”
By the way Q, if the Apple OS is so great, why is it that querying Google with “xp on a mac” gives 70,900 results?
October 21st, 2006 at 5:14 pm
Has anybody seen a download link to the OSX version of FEAR? It’s one of my favorite games I want to try to OSX version.
I figure there is some way to dual boot into XP (or boot camp) and run it, but I really am trying to just be 100% OSX–since it the perfect holy grail of operating systems and all.
Thanks, guys.
October 21st, 2006 at 6:26 pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAI0coqXp3M looks pretty good. Seems the truth is out.
October 21st, 2006 at 6:51 pm
Hey Q, what’s up with the Finder in OS X? It can connect to FTPs, but doesn’t support uploading to them. Why bother?
October 21st, 2006 at 7:48 pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axC-7O4Yq-w&NR is good too. Mac killed his inner child.
October 23rd, 2006 at 12:25 pm
Hey David, just throwing out a debate club term doesn’t mean the argument isn’t valid. You claim that market share tells an important story. I provide, I think, a reasonable analogy where winning the market share battle has nothing to do with quality. And you didn’t even nibble on my Taco Bell bait. Can you go into a Best Buy or Circuit City and buy a computer that doesn’t have a Windows license?
Shamanstears: I do think it’s odd that the finder prevents ftp uploads. However, thinking back on it, I shudder and beg and plead whenever Davak says he’s uploading something to one of our servers using a GUI interface. It’s very easy to butcher things very easily that way. Although, if that were the case, it should be the default state and should be overridable. However, I don’t think I’ve ever used a GUI ftp tool, so it doesn’t really ruffle my feathers.
Here’s one for you: why does it take two reboots to install ie7?
October 23rd, 2006 at 8:22 pm
Q: The two reboots are to judge if you are truly worthy enough (and patient enough) to receive this magnificent piece of software!
That aside, the first one is to uninstall the previous version and then the next reboot is to finish up installation. Kind of a pain if you manage a network like I do, 130+ users and only the IT department can perform the install. Two reboots tends to add up when you are doing multiple installs.
November 22nd, 2006 at 10:49 pm
As a recovering “Windoze” user (I used to custom build PC’s) I have to say I am more partial to Mac OS X and Apple (and I am writing this while running Windows VISTA RC2 on my new Mac Pro - LOL I’m a hypocrit). But it’s comparing Apples and Oranges (no pun). The main reason Mac OS X is just a more stable software is not just due to it’s programming or the fact that it has a small base of users that means less chance of virues etc etc etc but mainly since teh hardware is apple. Windows has to be upgradable, which means it has to be placed on top of millions of others users and commercials business systems that use it and that means many errors and bugs are easily carried along. Also, since Windows is just the software it has to work for soooooo many hundreds and thousands of others manufactured devices, and that translates into a HUGE headache. Apple doesn’t have to worry about that as just about everything is either made or manufactured directly from/for Apple. It just works. However, with Intel chipsets more people are moving over to Apple hardware and (such as myself) dishing out the big bucks to run both OS’s in one machine. As a designer, I love Apple software. However, after just reinstalling Windows Vista there are things about Windows I miss. It’s flashiers, easier to dive into and “tweak” (for me at least) and it’s much more commercially present (and since I need to use Autocad I have to use Windows). Yet, think about this. People complain about Mac’s being so expensive, and while they certainly are, I would rather spend the money on a luxury car that requires very little maintenance than a POS that needs constant work. As I have owned TONS of PC (from Dell to custom built Lian-Li Alumunium AMD towers) to Power-PC based Power Book G4’s and Power Mac G5’s to the new Intel Mac Pro’s, I have to go with the Mac. It just works… but both are so different…