PC vs Mac

I think I can say with all honesty that I have been dispassionate and open in all of my attitudes towards platform partisanship. It was nothing more than an accident of fate that I began programming for Windows. Actually, I bought my first PC in 1985 to do cross platform development using z80 assembler running on Spectrum computers. In those days Windows didn't even exist and Microsoft was just a small company in the USA.

My first project as an independent consultant was on a mouse for that Spectrum system which I prototyped using an Apple mouse. I had seen Mac Paint and loved it so much I wanted to do something myself, just to see how and the AMX mouse was born from that.

Later, I worked in the printing industry that used Macintosh systems for page makeup but chose PC hardware instead because of cost concerns when we had to create hardware for the systems I was designing.

Throughout my professional life I have always been seen as a PC oriented person and have often had discussions with techno-bigots as to why I should align myself with the evil empire or how Macs were so easy and friendly to use. I have never subscribed to these ideas though, mainly because really, deep down, I am an embedded systems designer oriented towards hardware and I don’t give a monkeys nuts for such sentiments.

As you know, if you read my blog, my experiences recently have trended towards Apple development for my pet Trakkus project which I have used as a vehicle to enable me to keep up with the broad mix of technologies that my aging middle aged brain needs to absorb. I'll say up front that I really like my Mac. It’s a great little system and has a style of UI which is both simple and elegant. My requirements however do not rest with the need to look at my photos or browse the internet or read my mail.

I am currently typing on my PC while watching my Mac-Mini spinning its wheels in a shutdown sequence which has lasted fifteen minutes and seems to have no sign of ending soon. This is something I was assured by Mac-ites that never happened on a Mac and that Windows was the only system that would waste your time with such unnecessary rubbish.

I have also just wasted my entire morning trying to get my provisioning profiles for Trakkus updated so that I can distribute the software to some of my beta testers. Well, the view from the trenches is that it’s not easy, quick, simple or pleasant to work on Mac development. The development environment is positively stone-age in comparison to Visual Studio and the way that Apple contain and control every tiny aspect of things proprietary to apple is a huge barrier to adoption.

Of course, I intend to continue because I have a financial investment in this idea now and from my first tests I think that it could be a success. I think though that, after having done the research on the ground I now understand why Apple has such a small share of the market despite their obvious skills.

Apple’s adherence to an environment driven by lawyers, licenses, proprietary systems and manic protection of intellectual property has made an environment that is not easy to work in unless you are nothing more than a consumer. Microsoft’s attitude of enabling the developer to adopt their systems has made the process of development so easy that there is almost no second choice.

I can buy a PC from any one of several thousand vendors. I can only buy a Mac from Apple and at an inflated price in relation to the equivalent hardware in the IBM compatible world. My Mac Mini cost me a euro shy of five hundred and I just bought a well equipped ACER PC for my daughter with more memory, more hard-drive and a faster processor for a euro shy of three hundred just a week or so previously.

Seriously, Windows is a better environment, less constrained by legal idiocy, more productive, more accessible, cheaper, does not crash more often, does not take longer to shut down, takes a little longer to boot up – unless you’re running Windows 7 which is similar to the Mac, if not a wee bit faster- and wins hands down in my opinion.

To be fair, I love my iPhone. It is my most used piece of hardware ever. I like my Mac mini. It’s simple, elegant and fun to use. I think though, pragmatically, and as my tee-shirt currently reads; “I’m a PC”