Macs are PCs

Wow, seems like a while since I've done a technology post. Anyway Founder pointed out to me the new Apple adverts - more PC bashing of course.

What always bugs me the most about these adverts is the fact Apple always brand themselves as not being a PC - in these specific adverts they've got two guys stood up, one guy in a suit trying to portray a PC, and some "cool" guy trying to portray a Macintosh.

Let's peel back the ideology that Apple users have fallen for - a Macintosh *is* a PC. What is a PC? PC stands for Personal Computer. It's a computer typically operated by one person at a time, a computer that runs general-purpose code. That's a loose explanation of what PC means, of course there are specific examples where these things have mutated over the years, my PC can have 6 people logged on and using it at once, but it's still a PC. I think most people would agree with that in some form or another.

I think a Macintosh is a computer typically operated by one person at a time. I also think a Macintosh is a computer that typically runs general-purpose code. I believe most people would call a Macintosh a PC. It's part of the PC market, it's one of dozens of system manufacturers and one of several OS manufactures.

Of course it's all about branding - Apple need to make themselves seem different - and they are - they're crap, and they're advertising is crap.

For a start if you want to try and pull PC users away you need to tell the truth, guess what? Windows comes with a few more things - not just a calculator and a clock - it comes with all that other software which Apple and their buddies are taking Microsoft to court over to try and remove. It doesn't crash all the time, I've been using Vista for nearly 6 months now, not one system crash while using it, and it's very beta. I don't have any anti-virus software on this box and I've never had a virus. May be we've got some grounds for false advertising.

Anyway when PC users see these adverts only one thing pops into their minds - they're not advertising at us. They're advertising to the existing Macintosh users - don't go to the other side because it's worse than here, they need to top-up the Macintosh ideology. Even Joseph Goebbels would be proud of Steve Jobs - actually no he wouldn't; Steve has only brainwashed 2% of the population.

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1 comment

Comment from: Reinhart [Visitor]
I have used both Mac OS X Tiger and Windows XP quite often in the past few months in a film production. "Macs don't crash" is a blatantly false claim. While our G5s and G4 computers did their job well, there were times where we did have instabilities and crashes with Final Cut Pro and ProTools that **required** a reboot, sometimes forcibly because of the "beachball of death." Macs CAN crash, regardless of what Apple may claim. Perhaps they ought to see their machines in use in the real world to see just how their equipment truly stacks up. At the very least, though, we never experiened an OS panic. But, a crash is a crash, if it resulted in a panic that results in an error screen that halts the computer or if it just freezes up with that beachball taking the place of the mouse pointer. As for the notion of installing a Windows OS on an Intel-core Macintosh: Fat chance. I will never do such a thing. I don't believe in consolidating OS installations under one computer as that allows for a single point failure scenario; if the machine should fail, for any reason, you can potentially lose the functionality of BOTH operating systems. I never believed in it when the possibility was there when it became possible and I still don't believe in it now. If you want to deal with both Mac and Windows, get two different computers! If one goes down, at least you'll still have the other to fall back on. First rule of thumb with **any** computer: NEVER COMPLETELY RELY ON IT. That's a rule that's been taught in IT many times over (and one that's ingrained within me when I've taken computer classes). This includes Macs and Linux boxes because, quite frankly, a computer is still a complex piece of hardware that can fail for any reason at any time. This is the PRIMARY reason that having effective redundancies, including backups, is so important regardless of the client OS that's being used.
7th July 2006 @ 05:19

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