Real Kato Blog: Five Lessons: Mac Versus PC Myths

With yesterday's release of Mac OS X "Snow Leopard", and the imminent release of Windows 7, I thought this would be a good time to cover some common misconceptions of the whole Mac versus PC question.

First, though, let me rant a bit about operating system numbering conventions. Apple: enough with the big cat naming. You're about to run out of cats, unless you decide to go with "Cougar" and forever be associated with 50-year-old martini-swilling women trying to pick up men half their age. It's probably about time to drop the "Mac OS X" moniker too, because people still call it Mac OS "ecks" instead of Mac OS "ten", and few people even remember that there was ever a Mac OS 9. Just start over with some new theme, like liquor ("Mac OS Vodka") or assassins ("Mac OS Squeaky Fromme") or something.

And Windows "7"? So let's see, here's how people count at Microsoft: 1, 3.1, 95, 98, Me, 2000, 2003, XP, Vista, 7. It's not the seventh anything, except the seventh release of the kernel software, a concept only known to the OS über-geeks within Microsoft. Ask an XP user how he likes his Windows 5.1, and he'll say "Whaaa?" Also, what are the odds that Microsoft will call their next OS "8"? I wouldn't be surprised if they called it "Windows X". Or "Windows X Cougar".

Okay, on with the myths.

1. Macs are better for graphics. This may have been true between 1984 and 1995, but it's not so definitive today. Back in the late 1980s, Macs had numerous advantages over their PC counterparts when it came to graphic design: square-pixel displays, what-you-see-is-what-you-get design software, several of the first desktop publishing packages, and perhaps most importantly, integration with the LaserWriter printer.

Nowadays, though, just about any graphics software package that's available on the Mac is also available on the PC. The king of graphics software packages, Adobe Creative Suite, is essentially the same on the two platforms.

Now, there are still a few advantages for a graphic designer who uses a Mac. Macs have built-in color management software, so you can see on your screen the same colors that you'll see on your printer. Anti-aliased fonts are more accurately displayed on Mac screens (i.e., they more closely match printed output). Macs can use the graphics processor on the machine for fast non-destructive editing functions. And perhaps most importantly, there are many graphic design companies that are still predominantly Mac-oriented.

But if you're an independent graphic designer, I can't honestly say that you'll have any problems finding graphic design software solutions for a Windows PC. So file this one under mostly myth.

2. PCs are better for business. This is the counterpart to the "Macs are better for graphics" argument, and it's again based on something that was only true back in the 1980s. Back then, Lotus 1-2-3 was the king of spreadsheet software, and WordPerfect was the king of word processing software. Lotus wasn't available on the Mac until 1991, and WordPerfect was only available in 1988 (and wasn't really usable until Version 2.0 in 1990). So businesses that had come to rely on these old DOS-based programs saw Macs as a non-starter.

Later, though, Microsoft Word and Excel displaced Lotus and WordPerfect as the predominant office suite... thanks in large part to Apple. In an odd twist of circumstances, Apple helped Microsoft become a behemoth in office suite
software, while Microsoft helped Apple become relevant in business environments.

There was a long stretch during the 1990s where vertical market applications (like dentistry software, for example) couldn't be found for Macs. And in what some saw as the death knell for Apple, AutoCAD, the one-time king of architecture software, was discontinued for the Mac. But today, you can find all kinds of niche software for the Mac (including dentistry software), and there are plenty of alternatives to AutoCAD. And thanks to the Unix roots of Mac OS X, you can also run a wide variety of Unix/Linux-oriented tools. Perhaps most notably, you can run the Apache web server, MySQL database package, and the PHP scripting language; this combination of packages is what's behind the majority of web-based businesses. With Windows, you're either stuck with their proprietary IIS software, or you have to install a clunky pseudo-Linux environment (Cygwin) to run Apache.

So are PCs still better for business? Granted, there are still a bunch of specific business software packages that exist only for Windows, but on the whole, Macs can run business software just fine. And the kicker? If necessary, Macs can run Windows in a virtual environment, to run those specific packages. So again, file this under mostly myth.

3. Macs are more expensive than PCs. This idea has been around a very long time, and is getting a lot of hay recently because of Microsoft's "laptop hunter" TV ads.

It is certainly true that the cheapest PC is significantly cheaper than the cheapest Mac. You can get PC laptops at Wal-Mart and Best Buy for under $400 these days; the cheapest Mac laptop is $999. Why such a large price difference?

It's mostly due to the price of the CPU, the central processor. Apple uses the latest Intel Core 2 Duos and Core i7 processors in all its machines. The cheapo machines at Wal-Mart use older AMD Athlon X2s or Intel Celeron processors. The CPU accounts for a large part of a laptop's price.

There's also the quality of the LCD panel, the capacity of the battery, the quality of the case materials, the gigabit ethernet port, the Firewire port, and a whole array of little things that a typical home PC buyer wouldn't think to ask about. Perhaps the typical home PC buyer doesn't care about all of those things. But Apple isn't marketing to that type of buyer; Apple is selling high-end computers, and is simply choosing to stay out of the low-end market.

"But then aren't you just paying a bunch of money for the Apple logo?" No. If that were true, Apple's gross margins on their laptops (the price of the laptop minus the cost of production) would be astronomical. As it is, even if Apple made zero profit on their laptops, the cheapest MacBook would still probably cost around $700.

So if your question is, "Can I get a basic PC that does the things I need to do, cheaper than what I'd pay for a Mac", the answer is "usually yes". But if the question is, "Is a Mac more expensive than an equivalent PC", the answer is "generally not". So file this one under misleading.

4. Macs are more secure than PCs. This is an interesting one. First, I'll put out an important fact: there are zero self-propagating Mac viruses in the wild today. Zero. There are trojan horse programs and other kinds of malware, but nothing that fits the precise definition of a virus, which is a program that infects a system without being installed via a user's explicit action.

Could a virus be created for the Mac? Yes, certainly; Mac software has exploitable security holes, like almost any other software package ever created. But there aren't any viruses floating around today.

Some call this "security through obscurity", the idea that Macs aren't targeted by virus writers because there aren't enough Macs around to make it worthwhile. There's some element of truth to that, but that's not the only factor.

For me, the most compelling factor when it comes to Mac security is a psychological one. On a Mac, users rarely customize hardware; and when a new hardware component is added, it generally just works, with no software installation required. On a PC, hardware customization is more common, and installation often involves a trip to the Internet to find the latest driver software, along with a few dozen mouse clicks to allow the software to be installed.

I think that over time, PC users become accustomed to allowing software to be installed onto their computers, even when they don't know what that software is. These days, a lot of malware comes in the form of fake video codecs. You don't know what a video codec is, or why you need it? If you're a PC user, you probably still click "Ok" when Windows asks you if you want to allow the installation. Boom; you've just installed some malware.

It's a situation where Macs, by the nature of the integrated software and the "it just works" hardware installation, makes malware behavior more obvious to a user. I won't argue that Macs are any more secure from a technological standpoint, because (especially with all the work Microsoft has put into security for Vista and Windows 7), that's probably not true at all. But as a Mac user, I simply don't worry about viruses, and I don't install anti-virus software. So are Macs more secure? From a practical standpoint, this one is mostly true!

5. Macs are more reliable than PCs. There are two parts to this, one concerning hardware, and the other concerning software.

From a hardware perspective, Macs these days have, in certain areas, higher-quality components than cheaper PCs. This is especially evident in the aluminum cases on the MacBook Pro laptops, and in the Mag-Safe power connectors. So, MacBook Pros are less likely to suffer from cracked cases and broken power connectors than most PC laptops.

However, there are also plenty of ordinary commodity components within a Mac. The solder connections and capacitors on a Mac logic board are probably no better than those on any other PC, and Apple relies on third-party vendors for many components (like graphics chips). So yes, you can still find situations where Mac hardware will simply stop working, just like on a PC.

And no doubt, plenty of owners of the white plastic MacBooks have complained about discolored and cracked cases, bad hinges, and flaky displays. So no, Macs are certainly not immune to hardware problems.

Still, I find plenty of anecdotal evidence of PCs being poorly constructed. Trackpads stop working. Keys pop off the keyboards. Cases develop seams. Lids don't latch any more. So although I can't necessarily say that Mac hardware quality is better than PC quality, I'm pretty confident that it's no worse.

The other aspect is software. Apple makes much of the fact that its Unix-based operating system is less prone to system-wide crashes than other operating systems. It's certainly more reliable than the old "Classic" Mac OS, but is it more reliable than Windows XP/Vista/7, which is based on the NT kernel?

As a long-time user of both Mac OS X and Windows XP, I can say that both systems will crash (kernel panic in Mac OS X, blue screen in Windows XP) when there's bad hardware involved. No surprise there. When it comes to pure software, I've also seen crashes in both environments... but rarely in either case.

I do find, though, that Windows XP has two specific issues that make it more prone to software issues. One is the thing called the "desktop heap", a shared region of memory that's used for storing things like cursors and icons. If some application doesn't release desktop heap memory properly, then all other applications have problems opening new windows, and the only recourse is to reboot. The other is the registry, the centralized storage of all preference and configuration information in Windows. If the registry is corrupted, and you don't have a usable backup, you're hosed: you'll have to reinstall Windows from scratch. And that's no fun at all.

Windows Vista and 7 have no doubt improved upon XP's handling of the desktop heap and the registry, but I can't speak to that because I haven't used them long enough. But again, while I can't necessarily say that Mac OS X is significantly more reliable than Windows, I feel safe saying it's at least no worse.

So I'd say this one is possibly true, but hard to quantify.

Should you buy a Mac or PC? You probably can guess my opinion, but let me just put it this way: Mac users tend to love their Macs; PC users tolerate their PCs. Which kind of user are you?

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