There’s been a little bit of an Apple Mac Jobsian love-in on the site in recent days. I thought it only appropriate to nudge the balance of objectivity back towards more stable equilibrium. Yes, you’ve guessed it, I’m a PC, not a Mac.
Today I’ll just focus on the Mac itself. I’ll leave the iPods, iPhones and iPads for another post.
Image via Wikipedia
A little scene setting. I’ve been using computers a long long time. I started programming at the tender age of 8, on a Compukit Uk101 that my dad hand assembled, using something called ‘BASIC’ from an unheard of company called Microsoft. Thus I was 2-3 years ahead of my school mates. By the time they’d unpacked and switched on their BBCs, Spectrums, C64s and Dragon32s I was already into assembly code.
Inside a computer is a microprocessor. The beating heart of the machine. The UK101 used a ’6502′ (later to be more popularly used in the BBC Micro). I came across my first PC in 1986 when my dad brought one home from work. It was an IBM PC XT, with a ’8086′ processor, 256kbytes of memory and twin floppy disks with 360kbytes apiece, running MS-DOS 3.0.
Laughably primitive by today’s standards, it had painting, word processing, CAD and a programming environment (The ubiquitous ‘C’) that let me stretch that ’8086′ processor to its limits. Everything I learnt then I can still use. The Intel 8086 was followed by the 286, 386, 486 and finally the Pentium range. Faster, better, quicker… yet still compatible.
Image via Wikipedia
I’d come across the Mac of course. The original Mac Classics appeared at work and at university. They were great for word processing and a bit of graphical work, but their diminutive screens were little use for anything else. Every one was raving about the ‘new’ GUI paradigm, apparently unaware that Xerox had done it ten years before Apple launched their best selling machine. I used those Xerox machines at work, there was nothing new on the Mac other than affordability.
For me, Macs have always been style over substance. Nothing wrong with that if it floats your boat, but pound-for-pound a well thought out PC has always wiped the floor with a similarly powerful Mac. While we’re here, lets dispel that other myth; that PCs crash more often. This was very much the case in the 90s, when were were running Windows 95/98/ME (a fudged 32-bit GUI on top of a 16 bit OS – and before the Mac zealots point and giggle – the Mac didn’t benefit from a real 32 bit OS until ‘System 8′, only a year before Windows 95 at the cost of much incompatibility), but pretty much ended with the arrival of the 2000 Kernel, upon which XP was based. Today, such comparisons are merely ‘FUD’. My current Windows 7 laptop has yet to crash despite daily usage since I purchased it in April, I know several ‘Lion’ users who are strangely reluctant to discuss this with me.
Fast forward a few years. Apple nearly went out of business in the 90s, but reinvented themselves very successfully. The key? Simplicity and standardisation. Gone were the complex and confusing Mac only interfaces, replaced by USB. Where had that been battle tested? On the humble PC.
In 2006 Apple abandoned its long favoured IBM/Motorola processors in favour of the ones from Intel. Why? Price, power, availability and standardisation. Where had Intel processors been battle tested? On the humble PC.
Discreet graphics cards from NVidia and ATI made their way into PCs in the early 00s, Apple picked this up post 2006, giving the Mac a much needed boost in the GUI stakes. This differentiated design was pioneered in the PC. So a thankful nod in the direction of the PC once more from you Apple users for that design next time you enjoy your Aqua UI and dock.
And what of the OS? Much cause of haughty celebration from Apple users? Some of you may be aware that MacOS 10 is effectively a ‘Unix’ derived from NeXT. It runs X-Windows. This has more in common with a modern Linux machine than it does from the original Apple Macs of yesteryear. Guess where most Linux development has taken place. Ah…
There really is no huge delta between the capabilities of the PC and the Mac today, marketing and brand perception aside. They’re using the same components, same technological architecture, memory and graphics cards.
A Mac today is, in reality, a high-end specialist device, fettled and polished to a shine. It benefits from closely integrated software, very limited hardware configuration and a walled garden in terms of software and accessibility, but at its core, it’s actually a PC.
So next time you switch on your Jobsian masterpiece, bear in mind you’re not really a Mac, you’re a PC.
Drew Wagar is a writer, you can find his blog and books at www.wagar.org.uk
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