OS X vs Windows

These days everyone has opinions on both Mac and PC’s. I have been using the Mac for over a year now and wanted to share my opinions on what I like best. I am going to start off with a bit about my background with computers.

In 1994 I was 14 and I owned a Honda 80cc 4-wheeler that my father had bought me when I was 5 years old. I was still able to ride it however it was just not fast enough for me. This was also the time when I wanted my own computer but we were unable to afford one. I ended up selling the 4-wheeler for $750 and buying my first computer with it. It was a Tandy 1000 RL which if you are not aware had no hard drive for saving data. You had to boot the OS from disks and then load games from the disks. I am not sure how the entire internals of this system worked however I would guess that the games were loaded into ram or onto a hard disk for temporary use. I never did open the system to see the inside. A few years later my parents bought me an IBM Aptiva that ran Windows 95. I used this for a while and loved the bonus items that came with it such as Home Director where you could set it to turn your lights on and off at certain times. Anyway in 1997 I started working at a community center where computers were readily available and then Windows 98 hit the market. I continued to use the various versions of Windows up until 1996. Over the 12 years of using Windows I had become fed-up with the Blue Screen of Death. There were other irritations that I ran into while using Windows as well, most notably were driver issues. The latest version of Windows called Vista is just a joke. We have a laptop with it installed and it is slow as slow can be. I also hate how it second questions your every move. Are you sure you want to do that? Are you REALLY sure you want to do that? Just do it already, I confirmed once. Most of the new features in Windows Vista were taken from OS X anyhow.. Just compare them

I have also tried numerous flavors of linux over the years however I was not too fond of KDE or Gnome (well known window environments) so they did not stay on my systems for long. I did install them about 5-6 times over the years to play with them and even had dual boot a few times. The only times I ever used a mac was during middle school, at that time Apple had deals with all the schools which made it affordable for them to use Mac computers. This was back in the day of OS 6 or 7 (I believe) I do not remember a lot about them however I do remember that I hated them. I was too used to the 2-button mouse and the mouse cursor seemed to move slower. I never spent much time on them.

In 1996 my Windows based computer crashed once again and I lost quite a bit of work that I had completed. Did I have a back-up drive? No, and yes that was a big mistake. However I have had all versions of Windows crash on me throughout the years. Most of my crashes came from Windows 98 and even more from Windows ME. With XP the crashes seemed to slow down but they still happened. With the occurrence of the last crash I was running my own web development business and decided to get a mac. At the time I did the research they were on OS X which I had known to be based on Darwin. I decided to buy a Mac but had also made the decision to go with the best they had. I bought a Quad G5 with the 23″ Apple Cinema Display. I used that for about 6 months but then kicked myself because Apple released the Intel Mac Pro. Apple was starting to migrate their entire product line from the PowerPC processors to Intel processors. I had just dropped quite a bit of money on the system but decided to take the plunge and trade it in towards the Mac Pro. I have been using the Mac for just over a year now and I must say that I like it over the PC. I cannot really say I like the hardware of the system over the PC however. This is due to not knowing a lot about the hardware in the Mac systems. What I can say is that I love OS X, it has the stability of linux with a really nice user interface. Aqua as it is called. I have seen Windows themes in the past and always wondered why anyone would want to skin Windows with the look of OS X, to this day I still wonder because it’s not the user interface that gives you the stability. I have found that there is nothing that I could do on Windows that I could not do on the Mac. The only down fall is that there are not a lot of games for the Mac. However this is already starting to change with the migration to the Intel processors. I love the Mac and try to avoid PC’s at all costs now.

OS X is a personal preference of mine. People who use OS X generally feel very strongly about it therefore they seem to come off defensive and bias. There is a reason Give OS X a fair shot and I bet you would love it over Windows as well. When I say a fair shot, try using it for a few months without touching Windows.

I love the OS however this is not a review of the hardware that will come in the next post that I am getting ready to write.