Differences Between Macs And Pcs

By Author: Daniel Pohoryles
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Over the last few years there has been quite a buzz about Google and how its search engine, rankings, paid ads, and a lot more other Google-y things are changing The World As We Know It. Fact is, Apple already changed the world, a quarter century ago, in the first Silicon Valley Miracle.

Now, that paragraph was just as breathless and hyperbolic as a lot of the technology reporting we get these days, but it has one advantage. It's true. When Apple debuted the Macintosh in 1984, in a now-legendary Super Bowl commercial, it was the first mouse-driven personal computer with a graphical user interface (GUI) among a sea of putty-colored, IBM-compatible boxes. The Mac started off "thinking different," with a one-piece design (unfortunately putty colored) incorporating a 9-inch grayscale monitor, and Apple positioned it as the "anti PC."

That was then, this is now
In the beginning, the differences between Macs and PCs were on the inside as well as the outside. For starters, the Mac's CPU (Central Processing Unit, the "brain" chip) was sourced from the "68000 family" made by Motorola, whereas PCs typically ran on ...
... 80x86 Intel chips. This is why the first PCs were called "286," "386" and "486" machines, but the name changed to "Pentium" at the "586" fork in the road. The Macs progressed from 68000 to 68020, 68030 and 68040, until Apple adopted the IBM/Motorola PowerPC architecture to counter the Pentium.

Through the 1990s, the rivalry was hot and heavy on three distinct battlegrounds. There was the CPU battle, Intel vs. Motorola, and the operating system (OS) battle, DOS and the Windows vs. the Mac OS. Topping it off was the "design and build quality" battle. All of these were elements of advertising campaigns as well as sources of computer journalist jousting. Although some of the ad claims were erroneous, there was a great deal of truth to the differences, and some people even tried to "understand it all." One of these people was Guy Kawasaki.

The birth of product evangelists
Guy Kawasaki was an early Apple employee tasked with marketing a new kind of technology. He saw more than a product, and correctly identified Apple users as a "movement" that represented a new way of thinking - The Macintosh Way, as the title of his book put it. Apple products (and the company logo, and the company vibe) were hip and relevant - rather than business-oriented, personal to the point of intimate and built like Swiss watches. The build quality has always been superior, as has the design, and few PC brands bother competing against Apple on these points.

The battles over the OS and the CPU ground on. Compared to their Pentium competitors, Macs with the early PowerPC chips struggled to hold their own. The OS battle was going Apple's way, and the introduction in 2000 of Mac OS X ("oh-ess-ten") signaled a new era. With the solid, if unremarkable, PowerPC G4 and G5 chips, the OS X Macs made a big splash, as did the introduction of the translucent, "Bondi Blue" new iMac. With the new iMac and the new OS, Apple and its Macs made a huge, nearly unprecedented splash at the beginning of the third millennium.

The Mac/Intel era
The battle continued apace, until Apple changed the rules and the ratings once again in 2006 when Steve Jobs announced to a stunned conference hall that Apple would move all Macs to the Intel platform. By late 2008, all models had been purged of PowerPC chips (the Mac mini was the last holdout), and the latest Mac OS (10.6, Snow Leopard) does not even run on them. On the other hand, owners of modern Macintoshes can run all three major microcomputer OS flavors (Linux, Windows and the Mac OS) on their Intel-based computers.

Today, the three measures of Mac-PC competitiveness are stable, and still point to the Mac as the premier personal computer. The so-called "Mac premium" - the extra $100-200 Macs command over similarly capable PCs - is completely erased by the software bundle. PC makers ship their computers with various combinations of low-end office suites like Microsoft Works and other low- and no-cost programs, while Macs come with the extremely capable iLife suite. The Mac's free package of iPhoto, iWeb, Mail, Safari, Garageband and other applications and utilities is heads and shoulders above any PC bundle.

Buying decisions
Windows PCs are enjoying a comeback with release of a very good Windows 7 OS, and there are premium Windows-based computers (with premium prices) from Sony, Alienware and other makers. The Mac, however, continues to hold a huge share of creative users like artists, graphic designers, musicians, audio engineers, videographers and film producers, and has made great inroads into labs, offices and accounting departments, too.

You can do great work on both PCs and Macs, of course, and your buying decision can be driven by any number of variables. Just consider what you really need to accomplish, do your homework before buying, get the best deal you can - and don't worry about any silly Mac vs. PC myths or legends, particularly those from 20 years ago about underpowered Macs or 10 years ago about virus-crippled PCs. If you want to be happy with your computer purchase these days, it's hard to go wrong with any of the big names, so hold out for a big sale.
About Author:
Panergy is a leading developer of software for the Mac since 1992. Panergy creates a multilingual docx converter software that allows users to gain access to documents created by applications they have not installed in order to improve their development and workflow for Print and Web Publishing.