Its decision time!

So, the arguments are in, and now it is up to you to determine the winner of Bone of Contention’s first debate! Did Rob successfully defend PC’s right to their dominance, or did Aaron convince the world that Mac should be dominant? Or, as a few of you commented already, is Linux the answer to all our problems?

Feel free to leave a comment about what you thought of our first debate, or if there are any debate topics you would like for us to consider in the future.

Not buying it… More than once!

I must admit that Rob has made some decent points in his argument for PC’s. They play games better, they run more programs, they offer more variety. But when it comes down to it, I want a computer that isn’t going to break easily and that won’t get bogged down easily. Windows really does run slower than Mac OS X, especially if you are running an anti-virus program (which you should, because viruses are everywhere). As for the hardware, more competition can sometimes lead to innovation, but it can also sometimes lead to cutting corners to cut down on price. Unfortunately, the latter is true for a lot of the PC makers out there right now.

So, they might not be the best choice for all applications, but in the end, a Mac will work better and easier than a PC of the same value. If the price bothers you, think about buying two of the PC you are looking at, and if it is still cheaper than a Mac.

Not Buying Into It

Oh Aaron, it saddens me so that you’ve been so successfully brainwashed.

I would first like to address your statement that a Mac “is what I want it to be.”  I don’t really see where you’re going with this argument.  You’re talking about third party apps to customize your computer, which a PC can do as well.  In fact, I would say one of the best things about a PC compared to a Mac is the freedom of choice, not just in software, but in hardware as well.  When you go to buy a Mac, you get to choose between what Apple offers you.  When you go to buy a PC, or even yet, BUILD ONE, you’ve got hundreds of options to choose from.  So whether you’re the old lady who’s only going to use the computer to check her emails and wants something cheap and simple, or the mother who wants a lot of hard drive space for all the pictures of her kids, or the hardcore gamer who wants 16 gigs of RAM and the top of the line graphics card, you can find it in a PC.

As Aaron mentioned, Macs aren’t perfect, and neither are PCs.  Yes, they do have a better chance of breaking down.  In fact, I had a hard drive burn out of my own this past year.  But in most cases, these breakdowns are covered by the warranty, and all they require is a quick trip into Best Buy or some other computer repair shop (it took them about an hour to put the new hard drive in).

Aaron also points out that most software isn’t being made for Mac’s because there hasn’t been as much of a market for them.  But why bother waiting for programs to be written for a Mac when they’re already there for the PC, and work just as well.  I have personally done a large amount of video and music editing on my fairly old HP desktop with XP and never had too much difficulty (what difficulty there was came mostly from user error).  And this market argument brings me back to my virus argument as well.  Just because there aren’t many viruses now for Macs doesn’t mean there won’t be.  Think about it, the reason there are so many viruses for PCs is because they’ve been so popular for so long.  More and more people are using Macs, so more and more viruses will be written for them.

I’ll admit Apple came up with a great marketing scheme with the “I’m a Mac” commercials, but I just don’t buy into this whole Mac fad.  In the end, PCs are still just superior computers.

Apples: Delicious since 1984

First off, thank you Rob for a rousing argument for PC’s. Well said.

Unfortunately, I think you’re wrong.

Mac vs. PC has been the great debate of our time for tech-minded people and nerds alike, with everyone picking a side and sticking to it firmly, almost like a religion. Up until a year ago, I was firmly in the PC camp, spouting such well thought out insults as “They don’t play games!” or “They all look the same!” or, my favorite, “They just don’t work well!” Then, I was accepted to the E-Media program at UC, and saw that they had a computer requirement. Not just any computer though, they specifically required the MacBook Pro. I was not too happy about this, being the firm PC guy that I was, but I really liked the E-Media program so I decided that I could suck it up and buy the machine I hated most.

Fast forward one year, and here I am, writing this blog post about how much I love Macs, on that very laptop that changed my mind. The phrase I had heard used against me many times during my PC crusades now rings true in me: “Once you go Mac, you never go back!”

My favorite thing about my Mac: it is what I want it to be, and no matter what third party apps I install on it to make it more my own, it never stops working or even bogs down. Part of this is due to the hardware I am using: 4 GB of RAM definitely helps keep things running smoothly under pressure. But what I think really does it is the operation system, Mac OS X.

I have been on PC’s with identical hardware to my own that have not been able to handle the amount of processes and applications that I have running at once on my Mac. I don’t claim to know all the inner workings of either Windows or Mac OS, but I do know that this is in part due to the fact that Mac OS uses a lot fewer resources that Windows does, especially Windows Vista, the worlds largest resource hog. But even Windows XP runs considerably slower than Mac OS X on identical hardware.

Rob mentioned the price difference of Mac’s and PC’s for the same price. What I just mentioned is my justification for this difference. Sure, on paper, the PC is much cheaper per unit of speed (whatever that would be measured in), but Mac OS knows how to allocate these resources more efficiently to make them run better. So to truly match a Mac’s speed with a PC, you would have to have more raw processing speed and memory, increasing the price you have to spend. While I’m talking about the price argument, I might as well bring up the quality of Mac hardware in comparison to most PC developers. Apple truly creates higher quality machines than any other computer company. Sure, they break sometimes, and occasionally without warning or reason. Just like any machine. However, the truth is that Apple hardware does not fail as often as other PC makers, especially in the laptop market.

At school, I saw a lot of PCs fail, and I saw a few survive the whole year intact. But I never saw a Mac fail, and I saw a lot of Macs throughout the year (everyone in my program has a MacBook Pro, and many other college students have MacBooks.) The problems the PCs had ranged from hard drive failures to motherboard failures to faulty wiring. I even saw a kid open his PC, an HP I believe, from the box only to have it fail to boot properly. The hard drive was dead before he even had a chance to mess it up himself. And this was one of their highest end laptops (I can’t remember which one to be exact, but it was as expensive as my 17″ MacBook Pro, or in other words, expensive enough.) I did see one Mac break, but that was caused by a blunt trauma, and wasn’t really due to a natural failing of the machine itself, but rather its owner. They slammed it into a corner somewhere and the LCD screen was broken. They were able to return it to the Apple store and get a brand new one with no hassle at all, and they never had to deal with foreign techs who can’t speak English.

However much I love them though, Macs are not perfect. As Rob mentioned, they suffer from a lack of compatibility with a wide variety of programs, ranging from games to productivity software. I admit, I run Parallels so I can run Windows on my Mac for when I want to play a game. While this does work, it doesn’t work as well as just owning a PC for gaming, which I someday will, when I have money to blow. But I think that a lot of the problem with Macs compatibility is that developers are not working with Apple enough right now because in the past it hasn’t been profitable to based on the amount of people using Macs. Now, as more people use Macs, I see more programs and games becoming Mac compatible. Rob mentioned that PCs work just as well with media programs as Macs do, but sadly, I think he is wrong. I have used many of these programs, such as Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, and Pro Tools, and while they might be compatible with the PC, the Mac OS is more suited to working with the mass amount of windows these programs have open at once. This is something you would have to use to truly get, but Mac’s window panning and Spaces features really help to manage large amounts of windows quickly and easily. These are the features that drive Rob nuts when he uses my computer. I have hot corners on, which is a feature that Mac has that allows you to set Spaces or window panning to one of the corners of the screen, to be activated when you move the mouse to that corner. When Rob uses my computer he accidentally hits them all the time, making the the windows dance around the screen and causing him to get frustrated. I like the feature, but if you don’t, it is easily turned off, and is even off by default when you buy the computer.

My final argument is the virus issue. Macs don’t get many of them, PCs do. Sure, this could change as more people switch to Macs, but Mac OS is far less susceptible to viruses than Windows is. So, we might not be as safe in the future, but I don’t think us Mac users will ever have as many problems with viruses as do the PCs of today.

So take it from me, a guy who has been on both sides of the debate: Macs kick the crap out of PCs.

…and I’m a PC

So when I took on defending Microsoft’s OS, Windows, I thought to myself, this’ll be easy.  Windows has been the dominant force in computers for decades now.  But ever since Apple’s line of “I’m a Mac” commercials have come out, Microsoft has been on the defensive, forced to advertise against what Apple was claiming.  Despite the fact that it seems Windows is on the way out, it is still by far the best operating system on the market.

First off, let’s talk about user interface.  A lot of people I talk to say the Mac interface is very user friendly and much easier to understand than a PC.  I say that’s ridiculous.  Windows has been around for a long time, and they stick with what they know works.  People are comfortable with the bar across the bottom with your open programs, the start button, it’s all very familiar and easy to use.  Every time I try and use Aaron’s computer, usually to get music from iTunes, a program I am familiar with, I end up getting frustrated and making Aaron do things for me.

Second, what about programs.  Being an engineer, a lot of the software I use (and I mean a LOT) is only available for a Windows operating system.  Sure, you can partition your hard drive just to use these on a Mac, but why would you want to bog down your computer running an intense CAD program on a computer on which it doesn’t belong (haha, sorry Hutch).  And engineering programs aren’t the only thing nice about PC’s.  Any sort of business program, such as Microsoft office, is easier and runs better on a PC.

And, what about games.  I mean, anyone who’s even mildly serious about playing computer games would instantly be attracted to a PC, there are so few games that will run on a Mac.  Aaron himself has his hard drive partitioned just so he can play games.

Now, what does the Mac have better than a PC.  For one thing, people say they’re much better for any sort of media.  But in truth a Windows machine can run a video or picture editing program just fine, and of course, tons of people use iTunes on their PC’s.  The only nice thing about Macs in this regard is that the software they start with for these things is better, but anyone who’s serious about media will end up buying a more indepth editing software anyways.

Viruses.  That’s a big argument for Mac owners.  “Macs don’t get viruses like PC’s do all the time.”  Alright, so maybe that’s true now, but don’t get all excited about that.  The more people you convert to the Mac side, the more viruses are going to be developed that effect your precious virus free computers.  The only reason there are so many viruses Windows has to deal with is because it’s been the only real major operating system for years.  Viruses run on supply and demand just like anything else made; what’s the point in creating a virus for a group of computers that isn’t widely used?  But don’t take it from me, according to Wikipedia (yes I know it’s not considered a viable source, but honestly, who doesn’t use it?) “Microsoft software is targeted by virus writers due to their desktop dominance…”  So don’t get used to no viruses, all you Mac users, the more of you there are, the more viruses there will be.

Finally, there’s the price.  You can get a relatively similar product from a PC compared to a Mac, for a much lower price.  Why is this?  Because Apple essentially has a monopoly on the Mac OS.  If you want to run that operating system, you have to go to the Apple store, or a few Best Buy’s, and buy an Apple computer.  Whereas with a Windows machine, you can choose from tons of different companies (Dell, HP, Compaq, and Gateway, just to name a few).  Competition is what drives advancement and brings prices down.  It’s Capitalism, it’s the American way! (not that I’m insinuating PC’s are more American…).  Due to this competition, the price of the PC is more reasonable, and these computer companies are always looking to get one step ahead of the others by putting increasingly better hardware into the computers.

All in all, there’s many good reasons why Windows is still the major operating system.  In my opinion, this new Mac craze is simply a result of an aggresive (and somewhat low) marketing campaign on the part of Apple.  Windows will likely remain the more impressive operating system for years to come.

Mac Vs. PC!

Welcome, all, to Bone of Contention!  It has taken us a little while to come up with a good topic for our first debate, but we’ve finally settled on probably the biggest technology fight of our era, Mac’s vs. PC’s.  We wanted to start with something that wasn’t too serious, but not too silly either.  This one’s an easy one for us to pick sides, me being an engineer and Aaron being a newly converted Mac fan due to the requirement for one in his major (E-media).  By coin flip, Aaron got to choose who got the opening statement, and he deferred to me.  So, without further ado, I just have one last thing to say:

It’s on!