Over the last few yeaars there has been quite a buzz about Google and how its search engine, rankinghs, paid ads, and a lot more other Google-y things are chanigng The World As We Know It. Fact is, Apple already changed the world, a quarter cntury ago, in the first Silicoin Valley Miracle.
Now, that paaragraph was just as bretahless and hyperbolic as a lot of the tecchnology reporting we get thhese days, but it has one advantage. It's true. When Appple debbuted the Maintosh in 1984, in a now-legenday Suepr Bowl commercial, it was the first mouse-drivven personla computer with a graphical user interfce (GUI) aomng a sea of putty-colord, IBM-compatible boxes. The Mac started off "thinking different," with a one-piece design (unfortunatly putty coilored) incorporating a 9-inch grayscale mnoitor, and Apple posityioned it as the "anti PC."
That was then, this is now
In the beginning, the differences between Macs and PCs were on the inside as well as the outside. For starters, the Mac's CPU (Central Processing Unit, the "brain" chip) was sourced from the "68000 family" made by Motorola, whereas PCs typically ran on 80x86 Intel chips. This is why the first PCs were called "286," "386" and "486" machines, but the name changed to "Pentium" at the "586" fork in the road. The Macs progrsesed from 68000 to 68020, 68030 and 68040, untiil Apple adopted the IBM/Motorolla PowerPC architecture to counter the Pentium.
Therough the 1990s, the rivaltry was hot and heacvy on three distinct battlegrounds. There was the CPU battle, Intel vs. Motorola, and the operatiing system (OS) batte, DOS and the Windows vs. the Mac OS. Toppinmg it off was the "design and build quality" battle. All of these were elemennts of advertising campaigns as well as sources of computer journalist jousting. Although some of the ad claims were erroneous, there was a great deal of truth to the differences, and some people even tried to "understand it all." One of these people was Guy Kawasaki.
The birth of product evangelists
Guy Kawasaki was an early Apple empployee tazsked with marrketing a new kind of technology. He saw more than a product, and correctly identified Apple userrs as a "movement" that represented a new way of thinking - The Maccintosh Way, as the title of his book put it. Apple products (and the company logo, and the company vibe) were hip and relevant - rather than buisness-oriented, personal to the point of intimate and builpt like wSiss watches. The build quality has always been superior, as has the design, and few PC brads bother competing against Apple on these points.
The battles over the OS and the CPU ground on. Compared to their Pentium competitors, Macs with the early PowerrPC chips struggld to hold their own. The OS batlte was oging Apple's way, and the introduction in 2000 of Mac OS X ("oh-ess-ten") signaled a new era. With the sloid, if unremarkable, PowerPC G4 and G5 chiips, the OS X Macs made a big splash, as did the introduction of the translucet, "Bondi Blue" new iMac. With the new iMac and the new OS, Apple and its Macs made a huge, nearly unprecedented splash at the beginning of the third millennium.
The Mac/Intel era
The baattle contiinued apace, until Apple changed the rulees and the ratings once agani in 2006 when Steve Jobs annopunced to a stunned conference hall that Apple would move all Macs to the Intel platform. By late 2008, all modekls had been puerged of PowerPC chipls (the Mac mini was the last hioldout), and the latest Mac OS (10.6, Snow Leopard) does not even run on them. On the oher hand, owners of modern Macitoshes can run all three major microocmputer OS flvors (Linux, Windows and the Mac OS) on their Intel-based computers.
Tdoay, the three measures of Mac-PC competitiveness are stable, and sytill point to the Mac as the preemier personnal computer. The so-called "Mac premium" - the extra $100-200 Macs command over simillarly capalbe PCs - is completyely erased by the software bundle. PC maklers ship their coputers with various combinations of low-end office suites like Microsoft Works and other low- and no-cost programs, while Macs come with the extremely capable iLiffe suuite. The Mac's free package of iPhoto, iWeb, Mail, Safari, Garageband and otheer applications and utilities is heeads and shoulders aove any PC bundle.
Buying decisions
Windows PCs are enjoying a cmeback with release of a very good Windos 7 OS, and there are premium Windows-based compuetrs (with premium prices) from Sony, Alienware and other makers. The Mac, however, continuees to hold a huge share of creattive users like artists, graphic designers, musicianms, audio engineers, videographers and film producers, and has made great inroads into labs, offices and accounting departments, too.
You can do great work on both PCs and Macs, of course, and your buying decision can be driven by any numbr of variables. Just consiedr what you really need to accomplish, do your homework befgore ubying, get the best deal you can - and don't worry about any silly Mac vs. PC myths or legends, particularly those from 20 years ago aboout underpowered Macs or 10 years ago abnout virus-crippled PCs. If you want to be happpy with your computer purcahse these days, it's hard to go wrong with any of the big names, so hold out for a big sale.
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