This article begins with a metaphorical little pseudo-parable. In order to skip this and proceed to the main, meaningful, and rather tedious bulk of the article, please scroll down to "Mac or PC- Which Is Better?"

"WHERE DO YOU WANT TO GO TODAY?"

Consider transport in the affluent Western world (notably Britain). Most people make do with two main methods of everyday transport- the privately owned motor car, and one form or another of public transport. Consider also the main advantages and disadvantages of each.

The Motor Car

The Motor Car will, of course, offer to take you wherever you want to go today. It is, therefore, in theory more convenient. However, when everyone else also wants to go where you want to go today, you are more likely to find yourself tearing your hair out in frustration. Equally, although you are free to go wherever you like, you will find you almost invariably have to get there yourself. We all know that the motor car is bad for us, but while everyone else uses it, and it's more convenient, it's a fair comment that you may simply be making life difficult for yourself if you abstain.

If your motor car breaks down, you can pretty much always find parts- unless of course it's too old a model, in which case you're screwed. However, you'll have to find the right kind of parts, and there's always a chance that they'll be dodgy. The workings of a motor car are, of course, your business, and so if you like, you can always make a few modifications to the workings to improve performance.

As many of us will say, we know that the privately owned motor car is bad for us, and we'd gladly give it up and make the world a better place– if only everyone else would as well. But as that's clearly not going to happen (thanks to the capitalists,)- I think I'll keep the car.

Public Transport

Public Transport is wonderful in theory, but of course there's always a practical problem or three. First of all, if you want to use Public Transport, more likely than not you'll have to travel quite a distance until you can actually get started. Once you have found someone or somewhere that can help you, in theory, the system is elegant and simple- however, things never work out like that in real life, do they? The main complaint could be that no matter how elegant and simple the system may be, if the company in charge is incompetent, you'll end up pretty much stuffed. Equally, there's always the chance that the company in charge will charge you over the odds, firstly because not enough people use Public Transport to make it easily profitable, and secondly, because they know that if you don't like it, you've got no-where else to go. Except possibly to a private motorcar... which is, perhaps, where they're going wrong.

If you break down on public transport, although the problem may be quite simple to solve, you may well find that it's a long time before someone turns up who can actually help you. The ease of use of Public Transport is all very well, but it makes it much harder to go hands on and "tinker" in order to get better performance.

Finally, Public Transport would be fine for everyone, if only life wasn't made so hard by all the inconsiderate people using their privately owned motor cars.

Which Is Better?

The answer is, of course, neither. Both have their advantages, and for either to be significantly BETTER, significant changes will have to take place. For now, the only answer is- whichever is better for YOU.

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER- Coincidences are strange and dangerous things, but it is VERY important not to attatch too much significance to them.

In next week's episode- travelling by Linuxycle.

Mac OR PC- WHICH IS BETTER? From a User's Viewpoint

If you ask some passing computer geek, there is a 95% chance that you will get a firm answer. There is also a 94% chance that that answer will be wrong. This is partially because you could be talking about hardware, software, software availability, marketing, technical support, or see-through cases, and those you ask will tend to interpret your question to mean whichever they personally consider the most important. The issue is one of great pride to many in the computing community, and those who hold the strongest beliefs are often the least well-informed. Contrary to popular belief, only a very few Mac users both have beards and smell of wee.

Most people have preconceptions, many of which are based in fact, and most of which are exaggerated. It is also true that most people know more about PCs than Apple Macs.

SOFTWARE

The IBM compatible PC

There is literally a whole world of software, and you can get what you want. There is a surfeit of games, which are available anywhere, and can be obtained fairly cheaply. Other software will usually come from main brands- Microsoft, Adobe, Macromedia etc. for 'work-related' software, and smaller groups for more specialist software, for example graphics or animation. These programs almost invariably work, and will almost invariably be incompatible with each other. Microsoft produces much of the software used in the world, and as PCs are not produced and sold by a single company, they are the closest the IBM PC platform comes to standardisation. Standardisation of course carries advantages and disadvantages. Microsoft software tends to be utilitarian- it usually works, will get you roughly the results you want, is compatible with most of the rest of the world, and is reasonably easy to learn the basics of, but it's not much fun to use. Microsoft's concession to the user appears to take the form of a small animated paperclip* that won't go away and let you get on with your work.

The Mac

Even those fairly computer-literate in PC terms sometimes fail to understand the basics of the Mac– it is a different operating system, you cannot put in a PC program and expect it to run just the same- it won't. However, the Mac DOES use almost all the same information formats as the PC, as otherwise the internet, for example, would be unworkable.

It is "common knowledge" that there is no software available for the Mac platform, and like most common knowledge, it is wrong. There is certainly less software available for the Mac than IBM PC, but for everything other than games there is plenty. The major software producers, Macromedia, Netscape and even Microsoft produce Mac versions of their software, the only downside to which is that support for it is harder to find than for the PC versions. Games producers however tend to leave the Mac behind, as it is a far smaller market. There are enough games for anyone on the Mac, but the one you actually WANT will often be unavailable. Many large name PC games such as Deus Ex, Driver and Alpha Centauri do come out on the Mac, but they are often late, rather overpriced, and in some cases are poor ports in which case they run worse than on the PC. The best way to find out is to read magazine and internet reveiws for the Mac platforms. The Mac games industry took a severe blow recently when Bungie, the Mac's leading games designers, and one of the world's best on any platform, was bought out by Microsoft, and set to make their project "Halo," work on the XBox instead of Mac.

HARDWARE

The IBM compatible PC

Most PCs bought for family use come complete with peripherals, installed operating system and software, and are ready to be assembled and turned on once out of the box. As a rule, PCs are not designed, but have evolved from older models, which in turn evolved from the previous models, and so forth. It is for this reason that placed next to any Apple Mac, it is clear which is better designed. They are also traditionally ugly, although attempts have been made to make them more attractive by colouring them black or adding curvy bits to the front. IBM PCs use fans to cool their internal parts, which makes them noisy.

The culture of design in the IBM PC market is that power always comes first- you will always find adverts ranging from "BLAZING FAST NEW 1GHz Processors!" to "But Why Do I Need A 30MHz Processor?" depending on the age of the advert. IBM PCs can be upgraded with varying degrees of ease or difficulty, depending on what you want to upgrade, and the age of the machine, but there is always somewhere you can get upgrades, as long as you're prepared to look. IBM PCs are functional and utilitarian, and there are plenty of possibilities for "tinkering."

The Mac

Mac users and Apple take great pride in the designs of their machines, and with good reason. All IBM PCs are fundamentally the same- a desktop tower with drives on the front, fan and ports at the back, and screws where you can take off the case and strip the machine down. Apple computers, on the other hand, vary greatly, and this reflects excellent design. The iMac is single computer which contains screen, speakers, computer, drives, microphone and ports into one fan-less self-ventilating container. The Firewire and USB ports where the keyboard, mouse and other input/output devices go are at the side for easy access. The design is simple, graceful and attractive, but has its faults, for example, there are no non-software volume controls for the speakers, and upgrading an iMac is very difficult. Mac users should keep a straightened out paper-clip near the computer at all times, as some Macs are too trendy to have eject buttons on the drives, so if your computer crashes, the only way to get the disks out is pressing the emergency release with- you guessed it- a paperclip.The iMac also lacks an internal 3.5" floppy drive to save space, and as floppy drives are now considered virtually obsolete. The G3 and G4 towers are your basic desktop computers, which most closely resemble the IBM PC. One crucial difference is that the entire side of the tower opens out, making maintenance and upgrade extremely easy. The new "Cube" contains an entire computer (bar screen and peripherals,) including toaster-like CD/DVD ROM or CDR drives in the top into an 8-inch cube.

Mac computers come with slower processors than IBM PCs of the same date, but their general system architecture makes up for some of the difference, meaning a 500MHz Mac works significantly faster than a 500MHz PC. Macs are sold as they are, so you are unable to "pick and mix" as you could with PCs. To compensate for this, Apple always releases a range of computers, from entry level to special edition. The best advice is probably always to go for the best you can afford- as it will soon be out of date.

Because Macs are actually built by the one company, the "main" software is more standardised than on PCs, as Apple makes their own software for the machines, eg. iTunes, which replaces Microsoft Media Player. Macs are very much geared towards media, for example, DV iMacs come fully set up with ports and software to transfer, watch and edit digital video. Macs are also very powerful graphically, and are usually favoured by those in publishing or design industries.

EASE OF USE

The IBM compatible PC

Many find the IBM PC easier to use, for the simple reason that they use them at school, or at work, and know much of how the OS already works. However, the flaws in Microsoft software quickly show to a complete newcomer- when asked "How do you turn it off?" the answer is "Press START." The OS itself is rather 'pedestrian,' lacking several of the nice touches that make the Mac more pleasant to use, however, it gains by the use of a second mouse button- a feature the Mac has never embraced.

PCs tend to exhibit features which work well until pushed too far- for example, the taskbar is fine when you're running 4 or 5 programs, but once you start more, the bar becomes a cumbersome mess.

When things go wrong, PCs are seriously out of date, and tend to confront you with screens of horrific error messages such as "Fatal Exception at $0040:AAAA." If it SERIOUSLY breaks down, there is little you can do but call in an expert.

Essentially, the PC is an unfriendlier location to get used to using a computer, but amateurs and experts may prefer the "hands on" freedom to "tinker" that you don't get with the Mac OS.

The Mac

Macs are user-friendly. In fact, to a seasoned PC user, they can at times be more like "User-patronising-" in other words, making such an effort to be user-friendly, they refuse to let you do anything they think you shouldn't know how to or want to do. It tries to make setting up the Internet easier than is actually feasible. However, the Mac does come with an excellent central Help program which covers many aspects of both software and hardware, and to which certain Apple software adds their own help files when you install them.

The Mac OS sports such features as "Apple System Profiler" which can, within seconds, give you a list informing you of the existence and status of every piece of hardware and software connected to or stored on the machine.

At all times in the Mac OS, there is a little unobtrusive tag down the bottom of the screen. This unfolds to a control strip where you can, in seconds, and at any time, change the colour, resolution, printing, sound, quicktime, connection, speech-recognition, power saving and file-sharing settings, or not if you prefer. The taskbar is replaced by the "Finder Menu"- a menu permanently in the top-right corner of the screen which you can at any time unfold and open, close or hide/make visible any programs currently running or open. Instead of the start menu, program links (aliases) are stored under "applications." Programs are standardised- so use the slightly more intuitive option-Q instead of alt-F4.

One excellent feature is that a new Mac comes with a "system restore" and "software restore" CD. Should your computer pack up, you can simply start up the computer with the CD in the drive, and it will run from that. You can then, if you wish, restore your computer to how you got it, or simply replace all the software, without losing any of your files. This is a simple process, and is very reassuring.

Operating System

Much of the operating system issue has been covered above, and virtually everyone who reads this will be familiar with Windows. Crucially, most of the world uses Microsoft Windows, so changing to Mac OS can take a few days/weeks/months to get used to, despite the fact that they are very similar systems.

IBM PCs all still run on MSDOS, although nowadays all software runs through MS Windows, and you can do whatever you like without ever having to use DOS. Although this tiered system is unwieldy, it does give the expert easy flexibility than the Mac OS lacks. (See User-Patronising, above)

Sadly, the lastest versions of Windows (Windows ME) have removed the ability to simply 'drop' into DOS from the start menu, infuriatingly locking you into their GUI*, and meaning you now have to create your own boot disks simply to get back into DOS. This achieves little* except reducing the flexibility of the system which sometimes gives it an edge over the Mac.

There is quite a lot to be said about the differences in the OSs, but frankly, these are tedious fiddly little things. However, the iMac DOES come with voice synthesis and voice recognition as standard, and the Mac OS system for special characters such as accents¹ is superior.

Compatibility

Compatibility is always a problem with any computer. However, it is also one of the main reasons that more people don't use Macs- most of the world uses PCs, and producing professional-looking Appleworks documents is all very well, if you can't E-mail them to your colleagues or edit them on a PC. There are other, less severe difficulties, for example, the Mac version of Internet Explorer gives a slightly different look to the PC version, so websites designed to look correct on a PC can look shoddy or badly made. These problems are considerably rarer. Macs are just as "compatible" within their own sphere of software and peripherals, but don't interface with PCs.

Far more of an issue is that software being shared around, or even illegally copied, that works on a PC would stand no chance of working on a Mac. If you want to have the same software as your friends or colleagues, and they all use PCs, it is possible, but you would have to research whether it is available on both platforms.

FINALLY-

Suitability-

In the end, neither system is better, although most people would disagree with this. It is of course an academic question for everyone other than those about to commit themselves to a platform. For those people, the following information may prove useful:

People buying home family PCs for games and work usually go for PCs, as they are well supported and versatile.

People buying family / work PCs for whom games are not an overruling factor would be well advised to consider an iMac or other Apple Mac, as they are easy to use and set up, well designed, and have plenty of good software. Be warned- salesmen in PC retail outlets have been known to be incredibly poorly informed when it comes to Apple Macs.

Professionals in the publishing, 3D / 2D graphics and design industries often favour powerful Macs such as the G4 tower, as there is a great deal of excellent software, the machines themselves are powerful, and work well with peripherals such as USB graphics tablets.

Businesses and many places of learning tend to use PC networks, as most people can use Windows and Microsoft software, and there is a great deal of expertise and support which is lacking in the Apple market.

iMacs are used a great deal in the TV and advertising industry where computers have to be attractive as well as functional.

Internet Cafes and places of learning also favour the attractive design of Macs and their easy operating system. Macs also come with an easy to use built in "display mode" system, where access can be banned to all but a few features, ideal for displays, or for children who like to see what they can delete...

And finally, Harvard university in the USA is sponsored by Intel, the makers of IBM PC processors. However, they use a lot of Macs on their campus, so were told by Intel to cover them up on an open day. However, visitors to the university uncovered the machines, and got stuck in...²

Links

For further biased, partisan and entirely partial advice, you are advised to visit

www.IHateApple.com
www.IHatePCs.com
ILoveApple.net

ILoveMicrosoft.com,
ILoveIBM.com,
and ILovePCs.com couldn't be found