February 19

February 19, 1996

Craig Declars a Winner in the Mac vs. Windows War

It's time to stop this foolishness. The Macintosh was a great machine.

In 1984.

The only argument I've ever heard a Mac-eral make in favor of the Mac OS is, "Man, Apple was doing that years before Microsoft. Then Microsoft does it and everybody thinks it's cool." Hey! Wake up and smell the coffee! So what if Microsoft is just following Apple's lead. The question is, "What has Apple done this year with the Mac OS that Microsoft is going to duplicate five years from now?" The answer is: Nothing.

That's right. The Mac OS (for all you Big Blue / Microsofties who never bought a Mac) has pretty much been sitting still ever since I got my first Mac in 1989. There are no significant new features to speak of. In the meantime, Microsoft copied some of the basic look and feel of the Mac but did it better, hence the raving press that Mac fanatics complain about.

And of course Apple stole their basic look and feel from Xerox, so they can't even claim moral superiority over Microsoft.

Some things that IBM / Microsoft got right:

	The look of an application, with its own menu inside a window that floats on the desktop. The Mac has one menu at the top of the screen for the "current" application. You can't put two (or more!) apps side-by-side.
	"Sticky" menus. On the Mac, you have to hold the button down while you drag down the menu. (Win95 is even better - it highlights the menu items even if the button is up… clearly indicating what will be activated when you click.)
	Two (or more!) mouse buttons. (Hey, I still have three fingers on my right hand I'm not using…)
	The convention of "OK" and "Cancel." Oftentimes, a Mac application gives you only the close box to exit a dialog. How do you reverse your changes? Or will they be reversed when you close the dialog? Similarly, ubiquitous "Help" buttons are a Windows phenomenon.
	One "Enter" key. The Mac has a "Return" key and an "Enter" key. Each does something different. On my Mac, my "Enter" key is actually on a separate keyboard which connects to my main keyboard with a pendant cable.

Sure, there are plenty of nice things about the Mac. My wife set up our first Mac, and she knows very little about computers. Networking Macs is really easy. Some Macs turn on when you press a key on the keyboard. That's kind of cool.

And then there's the Newton MessagePad. Not a Mac, but a really neat Apple product (technology stolen from GO Corp, former corporate home of Bill Campbell, present CEO of Intuit).

So let's look at that argument again: Windows is everything the Mac used to be. But so is the Mac. There's ten times as many software titles available for the PC, and hardware is tons cheaper. In my opinion (nay, in actual fact) - the IBM / Windows combination wins the war.

Now, I want no more discussion of this nonsense.