MacOS Panther vs. Windows XP: A response

If you're going to do a platform comparison, compare platforms, not bundling

Published on November 2, 2003 By Draginol In Personal Computing

ActiveWin has an article that compares MacOS X to Windows XP. There are a lot of good points in the article and a lot of his findings are based on pretty solid and reasonable analysis.

But I take issue with an underlying "ground rule" with a lot of these comparisons -- he is comparing what comes with Windows XP with what comes with MacOS X. Considering that a Mac machine costs a great deal more than a comparable Windows machine, I think a more fair comparison is to look at what you can get for both as a platform. Especially since any OEM can always bundle whatever they want to with the machine.

Below are the points he considers to be in favor of the Mac. Most of these I agree with but I'll comment below in red.

Dialogue boxes: In windows you get things like Yes, No and Cancel - on a Mac you get Don’t Save, Cancel and Save – logical text information that is an improvement over Windows. This is just one really plain example, I could literally list loads. Open Recent dialogues easier to read than Windows

Absolutely agree here. One of the first things I noticed about MacOS X vs. Windows was the bits of polish like this that make is a better experience.

Drag and Drop: Far, far better in OS X over Windows. Things like dragging files to a Printer Icon to print, dragging images from the web to the desktop, drag folders to e-mail, drag a picture or photo to you desktop picture control panel sets it up as the desktop background, dragging pictures to your login icon sets that as your login picture. You can also drag reorder items in any Window toolbar or sidebar.

This isn't really a fair comparison. First, drag and drop on Windows XP is pretty thorough. But more to the point, Windows, because it is based on a 2 button mouse, does a lot more with right click menus. I'd still give the edge to the Mac though.

Exposé – Nothing more needs to be said

Agreed.

Navigating the file system: A Mac does in 3 views what Microsoft does in 5.

Yes and no. For one thing, you can't just type in a path into some URL-like field in Finder. I find that very annoying and limiting. Not having the ability to simply type into finder where you want to go is a major restriction IMO.

Colour labelling: excellent way of creating user defined groupings of items.
Icons: Nothing Windows has right now can touch the specs of 128x128 pixels and 8-bit transparency. You can also change icons really easily in OS X compared to Windows.

Wrong wrong wrong. First off, for the price of a Mac I think one can safely say you can pick up Object Desktop. Object Desktop has been giving Windows (and OS/2 before that) features long before they showed up on the Mac. First with Zooming icons on mouse over? Object Desktop. First with Alpha blended shadows under windows? Object Desktop.

And I can replace everything on my system with 128x128 icons/objects right now. First, most modern icon packages come with 128x128 icons and have for a long while. And secondly, ObjectDock and yZ Dock have helped popularize 128x128 (and larger) PNG files that you can download and use on programs like DesktopX, ObjectDock, or IconPackager. All of which is either part of Object Desktop or in the case of ObjectDock, freeware.

The price difference between the mid range Mac and a high range PC is about $600 in favor of the PC and the PC includes a lot more software (such as Office, DVD authoring tools, etc.) that aren't being considered. But on top of that, $600 can buy you a lot more after market software too. Object Desktop is $50 for the whole thing and it addresses a good chunk of the issues Byron speaks of.

Fonts: Better quality and quantity of fonts, various ways of previewing fonts, including the excellent and new Font Book. Overall a better Font Management now that Windows too. Better Anti-Aliasing of fonts.

Agreed.

Find and Search: Massively better in OS X than Windows. As soon as you start to type OS X starts searching. Sherlock is there to let you search the internet for Pictures, Stock and more.

Agreed.

Keyboard: Makes better use of Keyboard shortcuts, navigating the file system by the keyboard, application and document switching via the keyboard (Exposé), shutting down via a keyboard and more.

Once again, because a Windows system is less expensive, inexpensive extensions should be part of this comparison. Object Desktop, once again eliminates this advantage and then some. Keyboard LaunchPad not only allows you to assign hot keys to any program or website but can even be assigned to control parts of individual programs and apply saved clipboards automatically.

Installing Applications: You may think this is a strange one, but in my view, dragging a Mac OS X Package (applications behave like folders) to the applications folder is a much easier install than Microsoft offers us in Windows. Multiple versions of the same program can be kept on the computer this way, uninstall is simply a case of dragging the folder to the trash. Neither Windows nor OS X is perfect.

I don't think this is that clear cut. Most Windows programs behave as he describes. They just simply include a "install wizard" to walk the user through the process.

Video editing: iMovie ships with OS X and works very well with improved editors, filters, audio editing, and transitions

And for the amount of money difference in cost, you can purchase some pretty impressive video editing packages on Windows. And as a Mac user myself, I can tell you that you need pretty good hardware for iMovie to be useful. For one thing, in 10.2 (I haven't tried this with 10.3) some actions with video files had to be done as the foreground app. iMovie would pause the action when it wasn't the active program which makes having a high end (read: expensive) machine key.

DVD Playback: OS X comes with a DVD player that plays the video without having to have a third parties software installed to run it, unlike Windows.

So?? What is this? Bundle wars?

Let's recap: In my view, the minimum spec'd Mac I'd purchase today is the 1.8 Ghz PowerMac G5 with 512MB of RAM (which I'd bump to 1 gig). Add a 17 inch flat panel and your price is $3,348.00. This right from the Mac store.

Then I go to the Dell store. Without even really working much to cut prices, a 3Ghz Dell machine with a gig of RAM and 21 inch flat panel display with a ton of software bundles is $2,700 (like Office for example which I'd have to add on to the price to the Mac).

My ThinkPad T40 comes with WinDVD. Does Byron think that the Mac's DVD player remotely compares to WinDVD in features?

DVD creation: iDVD is bundled with all Macs that ship with Super Drives. Windows Movie Maker requires additional software if you want to burn DVD’s

See above.

E-mail: Mail is a much better free mail program than Outlook Express, especially for Junk Mail.

Agreed except my $2700 Dell with Office 2003 comes with full Outlook which is as good at junk blocking. But that's irrelevant anyway because I can use free programs like SpamPal for junk mail.

Calendar: iCal comes free with OS X and can be synced with Palm or iPod devices. Windows has no free Calendar program.

How can you call iCal "free"? It's figured into the price of the Mac. Outlook 2003 comes with a similar scheduling program.

Free developer tools: Apple offers a more complete set of free developer tools than Microsoft does for Windows XP.

Is he suggesting there aren't free developer tools for Windows? I'll concede that developer tools should come with the OS though.

Photos: iPhoto is far better at managing photos you have on your computer than Windows.

Again, this is bundle wars.

Voice recognition: This has been around on the Mac since OS 7 and is built into the OS – if you want it in Windows, you need to buy Works or Office.

Voice recognition is not something that is very practical yet on either Mac or PC. And voice recognition on the PC - Dragon Speak Easy, IBM ViaVoice are both excellent if you need it.

Speech Synthesis – OS X supports system wide voice synthesis and has various voices to choose from. OS X also has Talking Dialogues.

See above.

Screen capture: 6 different types of screen grab shortcuts are available.

Print screen! In fact, I can't believe that he mentions this because when trying to take screenshots on the Mac I found this infuriatingly annoying. On Windows, I can hit Ctrl-Printscreen to take a screenshot of a Windows or just Print Screen for the whole desktop and paste right into Front Page, Word, etc. Maybe there's a trick I don't know of on the Mac but I find it much more cumbersome to get a screenshot on the Mac. And I take a lot of screenshots, people like me are the target market for that bullet point.

Scripting: Improved in OS X for workflow automation.

I'm not experienced enough here to comment.

CD-R: Advanced options are far better in OS X. Add icons to CD’s you burn.
Sticky Notes: Free and built into the OS

Bundling Bundling Bundling. For a $600 premium it should come with more stuff out of the box.

Password Management: System wide password management through Keychain

I haven't used this enough to comment.

Spell-check: Excellent system wide spell checking – While posting in a forum on the Internet, I can have it check my spellings on the fly.

Agreed.

Crashes: So far I haven’t had one crash or needed a reboot (other than updates) with OS X – something that can’t be said of Windows XP.

Oh come now. Crashing on either is a non-issue. Windows XP is just as solid as MacOS. I've had forced reboots with both on occasion but it's not statistically significant.

No Viruses: This is a bitter point for a lot of Windows users, who usually then say it is because OS X has fewer users. Fact is – it is far more secure.

No, it's not a "fact", it's a matter of virus writers focusing on the market with 25 times more users. This could just as easily be said about OS/2. Is OS/2 more "secure"? It doesn't even have security for it. But I've never seen a OS/2 virus or Worm and yet REXX on OS/2 allows the potential to create worms the likes no one has ever imagined. But none have happened?

My magic rock here prevents earth quakes from occurring in Michigan. As proof I can show that there have been no earth quakes here. Would you like to buy my rock? $3348.

As soon as I get a chance, I'd like to do a video demo of both. Does anyone know of a freeware screen video capture program along the lines of CamStudio for Windows but for the Mac?

Anyway, I don't want it to sound like I'm bashing the Mac. I consider myself a realist on OS wars these days having been an OS warrior during the OS/2 era. But I don't like strawman arguments. And comparing what comes bundled with the OS is just that. Not only that, but it only encourages business practices that, in the long term, harm consumers. If OS vendors are to be judged purely on what they happen to bundle with the OS, you're going to get more and more bloated OSes with fewer and fewer healthy third parties to write software. And it's third parties that help drive innovation in technology.

Comments (Page 1)

Kona0197

on Nov 02, 2003

he said:
"Yes you can get add-ons for Windows that make it look like other Operating systems, but thats painting over the original way the OS looks. To be honest, one of the reasons I switched to a Mac was because the operating system looked so damn good."

This I agree with. OS X is more beautiful than windows AND you DO NOT need to get extra programs to run on your mac to make it pretty (like windowblinds)

Window users: your days are numbered. Either macintosh or linux is going to get you.

messybuu

on Nov 02, 2003

It looks like a matter of preference mostly. Many of the pros for both sides are things I'm sure not everybody needs. One thing's for sure though: I want an iBook.
OS X is beautiful, but even the most beautiful interface gets tiring after awhile. Is it possible to change the look of OS X without having to use another program?

Draginol

on Nov 02, 2003

Kona: You failed to grasp the point. Sure, MacOS X is prettier out of the box than Windows XP because MacOS X, with its $600 to $1000 premium comes with more stuff. But third party software on Windows, which integrates seamlessly into the OS, could just as easily be bundled with the OS if some OEM felt the need and it would cost a tiny fraction of the $600 to $1000 difference.

inazuma002

on Nov 02, 2003

Yo work hard and buy them both, or look @ the software and decide.

Chris

on Nov 02, 2003

Just wanted to make a few points, I've been supporting both mac and PC platforms for a while. I even worked with a publishing company that heavily relies on macs.
One, Macs do get viruses, I've gotten some on our Mac server. But like the blog said, it's not as common.
Two, Macs do crash, and they crash A LOT when you try to run OS9 programs on them in classic emulation mode. Windows XP handles Win9x programs much more gracefully. Not to mention, you can still use 9x programs with out constantly being bombarded with reasons to upgrade. Heck, I there's even this one ancient DOS program I use on WinXP.
Three, hands down, Windows has a lot more (and better) freeware available for it. You can't even get a free FTP client for macs.
Lastly, I might be a bit biased in this statement, yeah macs are all pretty and snazzy looking, but the interface has always seemed a bit dumbed down to me. Atleast with windows you can do a lot of customizing to the shell (ie. ObjectDesktop), you can even replace the shell (Talisman, LiteStep, etc). Arguably, you can do the same on a mac, hacking through Unix, but who would really go through that trouble.

kthxbye

on Nov 02, 2003

While the article's well written - and reasonably impartial, the primary thing I get from Byron's article posted on ActiveWin is his ignorance in many areas of XP.

Drag & Drop for instance.. XP works just fine (in both Firebird and MSIE,) for dragging and dropping images onto your desktop. Assuming you want to save that image - he doesn't bother saying if he's saving it or making it his background. If he means setting that image as your background, well, we /do/ have RMBs in Windows. ^_~
Dragging & Dropping on top of application icons works like a charm too. I've printed stuff by dropping it onto my printer, I've unzipped and zipped items, etc. I just don't find much real use out of this 90% of the time.

Keyboard? Well, there's still really not anything I /can't/ do in XP when I'm just using the keyboard, so I'm perfectly happy with its keyboard controls.

The Mac might also come with free developers tools - but really, if you /insist/ in free tools for Windows, get Cygwin & GCC or Borland's free compiler. Yeah, I know, third party. Either way, we still have VS and Borland Studio on Windows! (Not free I know, but both great dev platforms!)

ZiUL

on Nov 03, 2003

Why people need to say 'mine is better' ? It's like a 5 year-old kid saying about his toy.
If you like Macs buy one and leave the people with PC alone.
Long life to microsoft!

The DataRat

on Nov 03, 2003

"Window users: your days are numbered. Either macintosh
or linux is going to get you"

How silly !

Apple fanatics have been claiming for YEARS their fav
operating system will surprass MS ...someday.

In actually, Apple's desktop market share has consistently
~declined~ !

At the moment, Apple's OS has a 2.9% desktop market share.
Down from 4% just a year or two ago.

Linux ? At 2.3% desktop market share, they're poised to
overtake Apple's pathetic distant-second-place.

Yep. Linux will replace Apple and have an astounding less
than 2.9% market share. Whoopie !

You got to be on drugs to think that either Apple or Linux
shall ever hold more than distant second place to Microsoft.
A miniscule niche market.

The Computer Rodent

kthxbye

on Nov 03, 2003

Actually, though I rarely care, I think those numbers are going to be interesting to watch in the future.

Mostly I'm interested in the server numbers. While it's still a largely insignificant percentage, I think Apple's going to find its share in the server market rising more and more. Will it surpass Windows or Linux? No, probably not - but I could forsee it surpassing say, the various flavours of BSD.

The DataRat

on Nov 03, 2003

"While it's still a largely insignificant percentage, I think
Apple's going to find its share in the server market rising
more and more. Will it surpass Windows or Linux? No,
probably not - but I could forsee it surpassing say, the
various flavours of BSD."

THAT's just it, isn't it ? Apple -even in the server market-
shall remain "insignificant".

Let's face it: The only arena Apple has done really well
in the last several years has been as an Internet seller of
music.

The Computer Rodent concurs entirely with the prediction
that Apple -in a few years- won't be a computer company
...it'll be a music retailer !

Steve Jobs ain't a computer guy like Bill Gates. Jobs is
a rock-and-roll unregenerate hippie guy. Once Jobs has
exhausted the possibilities for tangerine-colored computer
cases, he's done for in the computer business.

Steve Jobs' real place in the world is working the counter
at Circles ...or, I-Tunes !

El Raton de los Datos

kthxbye

on Nov 03, 2003

Professional Music & Graphics design. Both of these have been Apple's strongest point since the dawn of creation.

Er, well, maybe not the /dawn/ of creation - but early morning at least. Even this has eroded though, with the quality of the Windows versions of design software matching that of the Mac, and packages like Propellorhead's Reason and the various Steinberg apps existing on Windows along with the availability of professional ultra-low-latency audio hardware.

You still find a decent collection of audio packages & hardware which are still released Mac only though.

I imagine Apple will remain around. Even if it entirely got out of the home market (I'd hope it wouldn't do that though,) it may repackage itself as more of a professional studio solution.

Theo

on Nov 03, 2003

I’m a PC User, however I feel that Apple needs to get out of the Hardware business all together. Apple would have much better success if their O/S(s) were ported to the PC (Intel) Market. After all, the main problem with Macs are the price of the hardware. Every last relavent comment here suggests this.
If when building or Buying your new PC, you could pick up the “Blue Box” for XP, or the “White Box” O/S x. I’m sure a lot of those O/S Xs would fly off the shelfs.

On XP we have a lot of third party stuff we can add, and there is more ways to chew bubblegum and bounce a ball on it. However, One has to know how. The average PC user has no clue about Object desktop, and by the time they get to where they know about it,( and other would be nice additions to XP) they are so fearful from compatability issues with other shareware. That they wouldn’t try it.
For first time Computer users Macs are more ideal, It’s hard to imagine others not being able to grasp simple concepts but trust me, you will get a lot less headach if you buy your 60 year old grandmothers a Mac. Most novice users over 40 would be better off on a Mac.

I noticed the word “Bundled” a lot. And when comparing one PC to another the point made would be valid. However we are comparing what Microsoft gives you versas what Apple gives you. Not what Dell vs HP, vs Tonka Toys give you. Again Blue box versas White box. So Bundled dosen’t apply.

Personally I use a PC, Mainly because of cost, secondly because of available software. But if Apple's O/S was available for PC, I would buy it, if for nothing more than an alternate startup on a partition. Or if I was loaded with cash I would buy a Mac, they are great machines. Id have it sitting right next to my Lambergini.

kthxbye

on Nov 03, 2003

I can't say I agree Theo. Apple moving out of the hardware business and then rewriting ('port' tends to imply lack of quality to me. ^.^) OSX over to the x86/Intel platform would only be the death of it.

First off, they'd lose their 'distinctiveness' as being seen as a true alternative, and relagate themselves to the status of 'just another software company'. Whereas today, Apple is seen as successful with the Mac (hey, they are seen that way by lots and lots of people,) they'd be considered a failure as an x86 software company due to their low market penetration.

After the initial fanboi purchases of OSX for Intel/AMD you probably wouldn't see that many other people rushing out to purchase OSX for Intel. Your average user and such, I mean. The average Joe will go to the store and look at the shelves. Noticing that there's easily 10 times as much shelfspace devoted to Windows software than there would be OSX, the majority of those people would continue picking up the "Blue Box" (as you call it.)

Microsoft would also be a factor. As it stands now, Microsoft doesn't really do much of anything about Apple. In fact, I've always thought of it as Microsoft seeing Apple as sort of a 'test bed' for them. Let Apple introduce the new features, and then see if they fly or not. If a feature excels, they can implement it, and if it fails, they know not to touch it. It's all nice and safe without Apple risking to hurt any of their market share. However if Apple decided that it was time to sell OSX for the Intel processor - Apple would suddenly be a competitor (No, I don't even consider Apple a competitor to Microsoft.). Even though Apple wouldn't stand a chance of taking away a perceptable percentage of Microsoft's share (Well, to my eyes... to Microsoft I imagine even 1% is a 'perceptable percentage',) they would then be in direct competition with the Redmond Giant - and I think you would see even more and more effort spent at making sure users picked Windows as opposed to OSX when they went to the store.

And it would work.

Also, you can get 1Ghz iMacs and PowerMacs for under $1000 now. It's not as cheap as an eMachines system, and it's not the latest and greatest dual proc. G5 model - but it's still more than a useable system. Traditionally (Though with OSX this /is/ getting less and less true,) Apples have a longer desk-life than Windows-based PCs in terms of usefullness.

(But then, if you - a generalized 'you' mind you - think that Apples are too expensive, and cost too much - then you simply aren't the person that Apple's marketing towards anyway.)

stanley

on Nov 03, 2003

oh!!i like this ..

Ted

on Nov 03, 2003

I use Windows, OS X and both Red Hat & Suse Linus almost everyday so I know, all to well, that they all have strengths and weaknesses.

It's really quite amusing to see people say this or that is the "best" OS or hardware platform. It just demonstrates that their knowledge or requirements are so narrow that they have no basis on which to base their opinions.

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