I’m the opposite, err nearly. I started when I was 11 on a Dragon 32 which is neither, I’m 43 now so I watched PC’s develop, Then I moved into the design industry and it was Mac all the way till the last 10 years I have been PC.

I really miss my old Macs as has been said already,

It’s a mac experience thing,
It’s the fresh buttered loaf,
It’s the difference between a Morgan and a BMW,

But the real reason I have been spurned into typing this reply is when I hear the age old argument over which is best, Mac or PC It always takes me back to when it all started and very rarely is it discussed the reasons why PC’s are the way PC’s are and Macs are the way they are. So ok here it is as it was,

IBM when they launched their first computer decided on a very different marketing strategy than Apple who were just starting around the same time.

IBM in their wisdom decided it would be better financially if they licensed their CPU chips so other companies like say Apricot, Compaq, Hewlett Packard and Dell for example could use their CPU’s and box em up as their own, this gave rise to all the various sound cards, graphic cards and other add-on’s you inevitably get with PC’s. A multitude of vendors all designing their own kit.

Apple on the other hand decided they would retain their CPU development. Only Apple Computers could make Apple Mac PC’s hence an Apple comes as a Plug and Use computer. No extra Sound, Graphics or anything added on.

As my youthful years were spent programming away dreaming of the next game I spent a lot of time reading about the latest developments in programming and watched as the market developed around the industry.

Apple Mac Software development had an advantage over PC’s. Take it from the programmers point of view, when a PC programmer sat down to write a piece of software for a PC he had to also make sure his piece of software worked with as many sound cards, graphics cards, joysticks, screens, memory, .e…e…e…etc.

The Apple Mac software developer had none of these headaches, because Apple made the computers, everything on the newest range of computers were fully backward compatible, this in layman’s terms means that any piece of Apple Mac software will run on any Apple Mac without the need of extra software because the interior has been made to exacting Apple standards. I have a program from 1986 for the Apple Mac on disk and it will still run on the newest Mac. Try that with any PC.

It is the nature of the Beast, Apple is an out of the box computer whereas the PC is a Jigsaw Computer built out of other companies parts. This makes them more unstable as bits of software are having to fit together and all you need is a slack programmer who is not following Software Engineering Guides and your whole system can be running into trouble.

In Apples case this allows the programmers to concentrate on the program quality, hence you get dedicated programs that are of a much higher quality and stability and this is the reason the PC market is always trying to catch up. It was a very risky and clever marketing strategy.

Now before everyone shouts he’s a Mac head I’m not, I personally think the two platforms are as good as each other but only in their own markets. In defence of the PC’s, because you change market place when you switch computer platform you enter the PC add-ons market for most of your parts and they are ALL in competition with each other hence PC’s and PC parts are cheaper, they would be 95% of the computer market are PC’s with various companies all competing for your business.

Back to PC’s, because of the nature of the beast you will find PC’s are better in general business and industry. They are Jigsaws of computers and make a better choice if you need to build a PC to do a specific job so they are widely used in the Heavy Industry.

oh and PC’s are better at gaming only because of the price, 95% market share means more people play games on them!

I hope you find that interesting and please before you say thats not like that now I am talking about nearly 22 years ago!

ghads is it that long now,

Phil

I just thought I’d let you know there’s been a recent list of “Why I love Macs” in the MakeFive community. Maybe you folks would like to share a thought or two on the subject?

http://www.makefive.com/categories/technology/computing/why-i-love-macs

Cheers!

@ chris – actually I will agree with you that black text over a white background is much better for readability, unfortunately I haven’t come across a theme with such a color scheme the satisfies me, maybe it’s time to hack away at this one…

@ g4b – it’s not that I routinely have trouble with PCs, it’s just that I have more problems than with my Mac. Sure, the task manager is a wonderful tool, but the problem is it doesn’t work have the time. As far as the sleeping, you’re very lucky, since the day I got my Sony Vaio it has never fallen asleep or woken up in a matter of seconds. Maybe our expectations of computers have just gotten too great and the technology cannot keep up. I remember a time when getting only one BSOD a day could be considered a blessing. If you compare the Macs/PCs of today with 5-10 years ago, they have both come a very long way.