The Presidential Election: Mac vs Windows
As the Presidential election continues, I’ve been thinking a lot about the two candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain. I’ve thought about the philosophies and points of view that are so different between them. Being that I’ve been an IT professional for over six years and a web developer for almost as long, it’s only fitting that I draw a comparison with the current Presidential election to the two operating systems I’ve used intimately for the past ten years or so: Apple’s Mac OS and Microsoft’s Windows.
If you’ve never used a Mac then you might not have a clue what I’m talking about in this post. And when I say used I mean more than just a few hours. Anyone who has spent more than a month using a Mac will know exactly where I’m coming from and why I draw the kind of comparison I’m talking about to the current Presidential election. Comparing Windows users to Mac users is very much like comparing devoted Republicans to Democrats.
I recently read a three-part series of articles entitled From Win32 to Cocoa: a Windows user’s conversion to Mac OS X (part 1, part 2, part 3). This series of articles does a great job of reinforcing my views and illustrates my own experiences that made me switch from Windows to Mac.
I’ve used Windows since Windows 95 and was a staunch supporter of Microsoft, defending them even when criticism was at an all time high during the late 90’s and into the turn of the century. But after spending three years as an IT Supervisor for a small architectural firm, dealing with day to day issues with the administration of Microsoft software, and beta testing Microsoft’s latest OS, Windows Vista, my philosophy started to change.
The first change came when I got sick of dealing with Microsoft’s .NET platform for doing web development. I felt that there had to be something easier and just as powerful to use. So I ended up switching to the use of Apache web servers, PHP, MySQL, and Linux/Unix-based servers as my platforms of choice for web development.
The final change came when I went out and bought a Mac Mini out of frustration. The tools I was using for web development just weren’t working right on my Windows-based PC and I really wanted a change. I was already highly familiar with Linux and Unix-based operating systems so a Mac wasn’t that much of a jump for me. Once I got up and running I haven’t looked back ever since. I even formatted my old PC and turned it into a Linux server.
So how does this translate to the current election?
When I was beta testing Vista, it became clear to me that Microsoft was giving me more of the same. They were more or less trying to candy coat everything in a slick package and attempting to solve all of the users problems with band-aids. What they ended up with was a bloated mess of an operating system that required twice the horse power that Windows XP required. As such, anyone who wanted to use Windows Vista would have to buy all new hardware….including businesses, who are Microsoft’s biggest customers. What’s worse is that there are so many similarities to Mac OS X. They practically ripped off ideas from Apple. Yep, there’s lots of pork in Vista.
From a developers point of view, writing applications for Windows is a trying experience. I certainly remember my time trying to get a .NET web application working. I felt like I spent more time dicking around with the configuration than I did actually writing code. As Peter Bright points out:
Windows is dying, Windows applications suck, and Microsoft is too blinkered to fix any of it–that’s the argument. The truth is that Windows is hampered by 25-year old design decisions. These decisions mean that it’s clunky to use and absolutely horrible to write applications for. The applications that people do write are almost universally terrible. They’re ugly, they’re inconsistent, they’re disorganized; there’s no finesse, no care lavished on them. Microsoft–surely the company with the greatest interest in making Windows and Windows applications exude quality–is, in fact, one of the worst perpetrators.
Microsoft has always been a company that would have you believe that Windows and other products like Microsoft Office are the only solutions to consider for your business and personal life. They pretty much invented the use of FUD: Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. Anytime a competitor has threatened their core business, they do what they can to either stomp it out or entice their users to keep using Windows with a little FUD (”Are you sure that’s wise?”).
The thing is that Microsoft doesn’t care about the conscientious developer or the home user. They only care about making their primary core customers happy: corporate enterprise customers. As such, Microsoft doesn’t really have to re-invent themselves if their corporate customers are happy. Corporate users are happy with “good enough”, which is exactly what Microsoft gives them.
Candy coating, band-aids, bloat, pork, inconsistent, disorganized, poorly managed, corporate loving, FUD, disillusioned user base, copycat design, more of the same, good enough. Gee…is this starting to sound like the Republican Presidential campaign?
Apple, on the other hand, is a company that is about forward, outside-of-the-box thinking. Their products speak for themselves. All you have to do is pick up an iPhone and realize just how much time and attention went into it. Apple is a company that attempts to solve problems by creating computers and gadgets that are well designed and highly usable. Much of their success has a lot to do with their leadership:
Apple is Apple. Apple, as a company, prides itself on being a leader, not a follower. As Steve Jobs famously quoted Wayne Gretzky, “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been”. So the charismatic (some might say dictatorial) Apple leadership wants the company to be seen as one that looks forward, not backward.
Apple practices good, solid user-centric design in every product they create. I’ve read many books about application and product design for my web development practices and Apple is always used as an example of good design. Good design is about communication. A well thought-out, well designed product communicates to you by showing you how it will solve your problem. In times like this, the product speaks for itself. What makes Apple’s products so good is that they accomplish something that many other companies fail to do: to make a product that is easy and fun to use and addresses the needs of what most people need.
Apple’s products are honest and direct. For Apple, less is more. You don’t need every bell and whistle. You don’t need a bunch of useless features that you’ll never use. So they get rid of the fluff and bloat and leave behind only what is necessary to get the job done. What you’re left with is a clean, usable product that is a joy to use.
Granted, Apple isn’t perfect. They do make mistakes and they are flawed in areas, and Steve Jobs would be the first to admit it. Most users don’t really know what they want till they see it so Apple tries to anticipate what users will want to use in the future by asking questions and creating new products based on new ideas and innovation. Many times they succeed, but sometimes they fail. But they learn from their failures and move on. Part of their failures includes listening to their users and asking them why a product wasn’t good. That’s just good management and good business.
Leadership, forward, outside-of-the-box thinking, communication, well managed, honest, direct, clean, usable, fallible, innovative. I don’t expect perfection but I don’t want something that’s just “good enough”. I just want it to work and work well and solve my problems. Apple give me that. I think Barack Obama will give me that as well.
