Alrighty, I’m back, and to kick things off after the vacation I’m doing something I’ve been wanting to do for a while now. I’m doing a blog entry on the Windows OS and Mac OS, and I’ll branch out a little into ethics and foundations and stuff.
So we should just jump right in, and then we’ll take it from there, starting at the bottom. Get ready for the epic battle!
vs
What lies beneath
So, as promised, we start at the foundations. And I promise on my honor as a nerd that I shall keep this fair and clean. The people at Apple have gone one way, and the people at Microsoft haven’t gone anywhere as far as this point is concerned. Microsoft Operating Systems are all based on the good old ms-dos command prompt, which in turn relies on the BIOS. Naturally there are some issues with this, because both of these were outdated in the 90s. Microsoft has done a fantastic job of patching and fixing, and the computer manufacturers have been great at developing BIOS, but the problem still remains that these were made during pre-internet times! The MS-DOS was Microsoft’s first real OS, and no matter how much you try to patch it it still wasn’t initially made for this age. With the conception of Windows Seven we’re hoping to see some improvement in this area, having been promised a redesigned core, but Microsoft so loves its archaic software that they refuse to let anything whither and die. They have been praised for being backwards compatible, but have taken it to an extreme where it is inhibiting innovation.
What Apple has done is, in my opinion, a better thing, but only barely. Where Microsoft is overly nostalgic, Apple is overly ambitious. It has paid off, because their computers needed to be changed, but they care very little for being backwards compatible at all, and nowadays they just throw it all on the UNIX platform’s overstrained back. When someone points to backwards compatibility, Apple points to UNIX and says “We gave you UNIX, now you figure it out.”
Apple saw that BIOS was old and outdated, so instead they made another ambitious move. They went with EFI. EFI is an interesting, and rather new, platform. It is made for modern operating systems to communicate directly with the firmware, where Windows OSs have to tell the MS-DOS underneath to talk to the BIOS, which in turn communicates with the firmware. This means the processor has to do less calculations with EFI, and there are fewer steps that can screw up. However there are some drawbacks, as is always the case when innovating. EFI is new, and thus somewhat lacking. BIOS can be likened to a sturdy old workhorse. It’s old and slow, but its been around a while and knows everyone. EFI has some social issues. First off it isn’t very good with the whole partition thing. If you want to go beyond four partitions you’re going to have to get pretty involved with the technical stuff, and a lot of people are not prepared to do that. However these people won’t need more than four partitions most of the time. EFI also means that you have to use a new partition table format, GUID, that doesn’t work well with the old MBR, meaning a BIOS has to be emulated for Widows to run with it. These are minor issues which will probably be dealt with.
Processors
This used to be the major difference between the two. Mac OS ran on the PowerPC architecture, while Microsoft ran on the x86 architecture. On the whole PowerPC processors were faster at executing tasks for a while, due to the operating systems way of doing things, and the design of the processor focusing on all over speed, and not only clock speeds. However as the multi-core processors became commonplace, Apple made the move to x86. This
again resulted in a major transition, causing quite some damage. It was a necessary transition, and for once Apple has provided so
me, albeit very flawed, backwards compatibility. Someone always gets hurt in these things.
As the world moves towards 64 bit computers, Apple is being very slow at adapting. Although all new Macs come with 64 bit processors, the operating system remains at 32 bit. Microsoft has done well on this point, and all kudos to them. They are having some software compatibility issues, but they are rather few and obscure, and on the whole they have beat Apple on this point. Apple promised a 64 bit Leopard, and have now promised a fully 64 bit Snow Leopard. We are still waiting for that.
The Actual Operating Systems
This is the really interesting stuff, and what is really the deciding factor. What do the two deliver, what is different, and what is better where?
The most striking difference is the GUI, the Guided User Interface. It is what you see when you are interacting with your computer, and the medium through which you do the actual interacting. The people at Apple have gone for a really sleek, intuitive, and simplistic design. The menu bar is always in the same place, on the top, the buttons are all where you expect them to be, and do what you expect them to do. There is always a feeling that the applications are designed to work together, and thus you find the same menu bars and the same shortcuts in most apps.
The people at Microsoft have also put a lot of work into the GUI, and the Windows 7 one looks promising, but there are many things that are fundamentally wrong. There is no conformity, every time you use a new application you have to learn where your menu bars are at, which shortcuts do what, etc. Your buttons don’t necessarily do the same thing from application to application, and different applications behave differently to the same commands. It looks sleek when you start using it, but before long it clutters up, and just becomes really messy.Securitywise Mac OS wins hands down, simply because it is UNIX based. UNIX is a very secure system, and Mac OS is paranoid about applications that have been downloaded, and denies them if they try to run, asking you if it’s all ok. However it does so without the UAC rubbish that Windows does, which always pesters you for the smallest change. Mac OS asks you the first time you run a downloaded app, and after that it remembers the app and lets it do what it wants. Another great thing about UNIX is that more people are using Microsoft systems at the moment. Ironic as it may seem, this means that most malicious code is written with MS in mind, and therefore is completely harmless to UNIX systems. Mac OS also has a user friendly firewall programmed into the system preferences.
And once we’re on the subject of apps, you reach the killer feature. Mac OS uses a drag and drop system. There is no installation of applications, and no rebooting, except for software designed by Microsoft, and some by Adobe. You simply drag the application to wherever you want it, usually the applications folder, and run it from there. This is really what makes Mac OS X superior when it comes to user friendliness, and makes the operating system so appealing.
The ultimate conclusion
Make one for yourself! Go to the nearest Apple Store and try a mac, then go to a different store and try out Windows, keeping what I’ve said in mind. If you want a gamer computer and nothing else, Windows will always be better, but for everything else the Mac is usually superior. If you want games, you should be on a console anyways.
Song of the Blog: Eple
I’m Bjørn Snoen, and I wrote this on a macbook pretending to be a stationary computer.
Think Different.
